Why Should I Trust You? Predictors of Interpersonal Trust in a Knowledge Transfer Context

To examine factors that promote a knowledge seeker’s trust in a knowledge source, we analyzed survey data from three companies in different industries and countries. We found that the biggest predictors of benevolenceand competence-based trust were more malleable relational features such as shared language (a new construct) and shared vision, with little or no effect from more stable and visible features such as formal structure and demographic similarity. Further, benevolence-based trust was easier to predict than competence-based trust. Finally, knowledge seekers’ reliance on knowledge-source behaviors in determining how much to trust a source’s competence were relied on even more heavily by knowledge seekers with more division tenure, suggesting that certain attitudes in the trust realm may solidify over time.