Interorganizational trust in B2B relationships

Abstract

While research about trust in B2C relationships appears to be flourishing, we contend that trust in B2B relationships remains underexplored. As the first step toward the remedy of this, we conducted a review of studies in which trust in B2B relationships has been covered, albeit to varied extents. We found that, contrary to the authors' and our expectation, there appeared to be a set of common characteristics among the definitions of trust in those studies. We explored in depth five key dimensions of trust that have been discussed most frequently. They reflect the richness of the concept of trust in B2B relationships. Since, within the context of B2B, trust should not be viewed separately from technologies, we discussed the conceptualizations with which technologies may be viewed as related to trust in B2B. We found that IT has been most commonly viewed either as a tool or nominally. The time factor of trust also is discussed, followed by our conclusion on the commonalities and gaps among the current studies on trust in B2B relationships.