Interorganizational Trust

I t has become increasingly clear that interorganizational trust is an important factor affecting the actions and performance of organizations engaged in dyadic and network relationships such as strategic alliances. Scholars from a number of disciplines—from strategic management and organization theory to economics and marketing— have conceptually and empirically addressed the role that interorganizational trust, as well as trust in general, plays in firm behavior and performance. In this chapter, we look broadly at the scholarship in the area of interorganizational trust, with special attention to the extant empirical work. We take a broad-brush approach to the literature, aiming to be inclusive but focusing primarily on the burgeoning literature on the topic within the strategy and organizational literature. The goal of the chapter is to provide a comprehensive, high-level, definitive statement on interorganizational trust, an area of particular interest to both scholars and practitioners of strategic alliances. Specifically, in the following sections of the chapter, we survey the literature on interorganizational trust, identify and integrate the key themes that emerge from the empirical contributions on the subject, and explore theoretical issues around conducting research in this domain, concluding with directions for future research in both theoretical and methodological areas.