Trust between Organizations: A Review of Current Research and Recommendation for the Future

As business has grown from single company towards network collaboration, trust and inter-firm trust is more important than before. Trust is a belief that collaborative partners can do what they promised in an agreement. However, in reality it is difficult to build up deep trust and confidence in a long term. This paper aims to improve the understanding of trust within organizations. By reviewing current literature, it summarizes four major trends of studies on inter-firm trust. The first trend is the analysis of trust components competence, reliability and goodwill. The second trend views trust as dynamic process. The third trend is associated with supply chain relationship management. The fourth trend tends to combine trust with social factors. A conceptual framework is further generated to highlight the potential research areas of inter-firm trust in: 1) the dimensions of trust; 2) the process of inter-firm trust formation, development and continuation; 3) the linkage between trust dimensions and culture dimensions. There is a requirement for more qualitative research to explore key trust dimensions and activities, with a combination of quantitative approach to test the proposed hypothesis.