Trust across borders
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COMMENTARY
Trust across borders Srilata Zaheer and Akbar Zaheer Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Correspondence: S Zaheer, Strategic Management and Organization Department, Carlson School of Management, 3-426, University of Minnesota, 321 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. Tel: þ 1 612 624 5590; Fax: þ 1 612 626 1316; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract We make the case for fresh approaches to examine the role of trust in international collaborations, based on the idea that not only do the levels of trust differ across international borders but also both the nature of trust and the institutional and cultural support for trust can vary across different national contexts. Collaboration partners from different countries are therefore likely to bring either symmetric or asymmetric conceptions of trust to the business relationship. We develop a model and propositions linking symmetry and asymmetry in the institutional and cultural support for trust in international collaborations with the degree of partner interdependence, and identify implications for governance and trust-building investments. We conclude with some suggestions for research that incorporates trust asymmetries between partners. Journal of International Business Studies (2006) 37, 21–29. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400180 Keywords: trust; international; joint ventures; etic; culture; institutions; governance
Received: 17 October 2005 Accepted: 17 October 2005 Online publication date: 15 December 2005
Introduction Trust has emerged as a central theme in international strategy research, particularly since Madhok’s influential article published in the Journal of International Business Studies in 1995. That paper laid out the structural and social dimensions of trust, and used trust as an explanatory mechanism for how and why ownership might not translate into control or into perceptions of equity in the context of international joint ventures (IJVs). While Madhok’s seminal contribution set the stage for theorizing about the importance of the social dimension in IJVs, the primary focus of that article was trust across organizational boundaries rather than across national boundaries, and the ‘international’ dimension was more or less relegated to the use of IJVs as the context. A decade later, researchers have still barely begun to explore the related idea that trust may differ systematically across cultures, and thereby present significant challenges for both cross-border and comparative research, as well as practice, in a broad range of international management areas, from market entry and entry modes to IJVs, foreign acquisitions, and the management of subsidiaries, customers, and suppliers overseas. Our specific focus in this paper is on international collaborations, broadly defined. We make the case for fresh approaches to examine the role of trust in an international context, based on the idea that not only
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