Trust and boundary spanners in cross-border management

Abstract

Boundary spanners play a critical yet unspecified role in managing multinational corporations and their foreign subunits. One of the boundary spanning functions is to build cross-border trust relationships, at both interpersonal and interorganizational levels. Previous research has primarily focused on dyadic exchange relationships either between MNC headquarters and their subunits or between suppliers and buyers. Inter-unit trust relationships and boundary spanning activities in international joint ventures (IJVs) are under-researched. We develop a micro-macro process model of trust building and boundary spanning, and propose a set of propositions for future research.