Cooperation and coordination: the role of trust in inter-organizational relationships

How should we understand the role of trust in inter-organizational relationships? Trust refers to the ‘willingness of one party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectations that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespectively of the ability to monitor or control that other party’ (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995: 712). The prevailing view in inter-organizational trust research is of trust as a mechanism, which entails a mutual willingness to accept vulnerability in the inter-organizational relationship (Mayer et al., 1995). Hence, inter-organizational trust research has suggested that trust makes partners willing to rely on each other, even though the other is potentially opportunistic, goals may be misaligned and the ability to monitor or control the other party is limited (Dyer & Singh, 1998; Zaheer & Venkatraman, 1995). In short, trust has been understood as a mechanism that eases concerns of opportunism and thereby enables cooperation.