Trust-building Activities Research Articles

290 Are you trust-worthy: Trust-building activities in Translational Sciences

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Many researchers aim to build trust with communities and participants. Trust building is meant to achieve greater representation across aspects of research whether in participation, or more comprehensively as partners from design to dissemination. We provide practical guidance for trust building activities and the ethical issues that can arise. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: While trust itself is inherently seen as an ethical good, often little attention is paid to the ethical aspects of trust building exercises themselves and the fact that trust can vary in type. Using a bioethical analysis of trustworthiness, we discuss how to approach trust in different relationships and settings. Explicit communication about the supports/constraints and potential outcomes of new trusted relationships is required for ethical practice. Where relationships are built without appropriate transparency and follow through, or with misunderstandings about potential shared values, priorities, or desired outcomes, significant harms can occur in the short- and long term. Using a bioethical framework and practical examples we provide guidance on how to engage in ethical trust building activities. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: While many people are good at the trust building work they do, this work is often not shared as best practices and is ascribed to individual skill. This is slowly changing and an evidence-base is being developed that can support those new to these activities. Ethical guidance to support trust building practices, especially for those new to these activities, is currently lacking. By providing both a conceptual and normative bioethical analysis grounded in practice, we provide the foundations for new activities and the necessary support for work that explores and determines best practices. This analysis provides an understanding of trust including a taxonomy and a discussion of how different types of trust can be built and can support research activities, as well as problems that can arise. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Trust building activities with communities and participants are crucial to much of translational science and research, but ethical guidance on how to engage in these activities well is lacking. We provide bioethical guidance and offer practical recommendations.

Engaging All Stakeholders to Create a Trusted, Data-Driven, Process Improvement Approach to Addressing Learner Mistreatment

Problem: Learner mistreatment has remained an ongoing challenge in academic medicine despite accreditation requirements mandating that every program has systems in place to prevent and respond to mistreatment. While efforts vary across institutions, much remains unanswered in the literature about best practices. Additionally, for the foreseeable future, challenges in the learning environment will likely continue and potentially worsen, given the confluence of multiple external stressors including the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty burnout and general political divisiveness in the nation. It is essential, therefore, to focus on indicators of improvement via process metrics such as knowledge and awareness of mistreatment policies and procedures, willingness to report, reasons for not reporting, and satisfaction with having made a report, while simultaneously focusing on the more complex challenge of eliminating mistreatment occurrences. Intervention: We describe the aspects of our mistreatment prevention and response system first implemented in 2017 along with process and outcome measures. The interventions included expanding our policy outlining appropriate conduct in the teacher-learner relationship; a graduated response protocol to allegations of mistreatment with a clear escalation approach; an online reporting system; a graduate medical education exit survey which mirrors the AAMC Graduation Questionnaire on mistreatment; a robust communication and professional development campaign; a comprehensive data dashboard; and a comprehensive summary report dissemination plan. Context: The interventions were implemented at the largest allopathic medical school in the U.S., with nine campuses across the state. The system is available to all learners, including medical students, graduate students, residents, and fellows. Impact: Both institutional and national data sources have informed the continuous improvement strategies. Data from internal reporting systems, institutional surveys, and national data are presented from 2017 to 2021. Findings include an increasing number of incidents reported each year, including confidential reports from students who include their contact information rather than report anonymously, which we view as an indicator of learner trust in the system. Our data also show consistent improvements in learners’ awareness of the policy and procedures and satisfaction with having made a report. We also include other data such as the nature of complaints submitted and timeliness of our institutional response. Lessons Learned: We present several lessons learned that may guide other institutions looking to similarly improve their mistreatment systems, such as a close partnership between faculty affairs, diversity affairs, and educational affairs leadership; communication, professional development, and training through multiple venues and with all stakeholders; easily accessible reporting with anonymous and confidential options and the ability to report on behalf of others; policy development guidance; data transparency and dissemination; and trust-building activities and ongoing feedback from learners.

Listening to Voices from African American Communities in the Southern States about COVID-19 Vaccine Information and Communication: A Qualitative Study.

The high uptake of COVID-19 vaccines is one of the most promising measures to control the pandemic. However, some African American (AA) communities exhibit vaccination hesitancy due to mis- or disinformation. It is important to understand the challenges in accessing reliable COVID-19 vaccine information and to develop feasible health communication interventions based on voices from AA communities. We conducted 2 focus group discussions (FGDs) among 18 community stakeholders recruited from 3 counties in South Carolina on 8 October and 29 October 2021. The FGDs were conducted online via Zoom meetings. The FGD data were managed and thematically analyzed using NVivo 12. Participants worked primarily in colleges, churches, and health agencies. We found that the challenges of accessing reliable vaccine information in AA communities primarily included structural barriers, information barriers, and a lack of trust. Community stakeholders recommended recruiting trusted messengers, using social events to reach target populations, and conducting health communication campaigns through open dialogue among stakeholders. Health communication interventions directed at COVID-19 vaccine uptake should be grounded in ongoing community engagement, trust-building activities, and transparent communication about vaccine development. Tailoring health communication interventions to different groups may help reduce misinformation spread and thus promote vaccination in AA communities in the southern states.

COVID-19 vaccination: Is it a matter of concern?

ABSTRACTBackground:COVID-19 vaccination is still a matter of concern among the public since its inception. Primary care physicians being in prime position can share accurate and ample information about COVID-19 vaccination so we estimated proportion and determinants of adverse events following immunization (AEFI) with Covishield vaccine, vaccination and reasons of non-vaccination.Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted from January to April 2021. Data collection was done by using data capture tool Epicollect-5. Regression analysis was performed to evaluate the association of AEFI and vaccine acceptance with various demographic variables.Results:Of 520 subjects, 408 got vaccinated, and of these 125 (30.6%) developed AEFI. Females without AEFI had lower median age than females having AEFI. Only religion (aOR = 5.311; 95% CI: 1. 216–23.1) was significantly associated with AEFI. Education (aOR = 0.399; 95% CI: 0. 199–0.799), marital status (aOR = 0.459; 95% CI: 0. 245–0.858), and religion (aOR = 3.874; 95% CI: 1. 96–7.648) were significantly associated with vaccination. Most common local AEFIs were inflammation (46; 36.8%) followed by lump (10; 8%) at the site of injection. Most common systemic AEFI were fever (87; 69.6%), feeling unwell (65; 52%), generalized weakness/fatigue (30; 20%), tiredness (26; 20.8%), flu-like symptoms (12; 9.6%), dizziness (10; 8%), headache (8; 6.4%) and gastrointestinal events (7; 5.6%).Conclusion:Most of the AEFI were mild and transient, resolved without any medical management. This study warrants active reporting of AEFI, public release of safety, and efficacy data. Primary care physicians can play a pivotal role by targeted awareness campaigns and trust-building activities to alleviate fear and anxiety related to vaccine.

The Trust-Control Paradox: Towards a Better Understanding

The purpose of this research is to better understand trust-control dynamics in organizations through conceptualizing relationships between managerial trust-building activities and employee effectiveness. We consider (a) how trust-building activities are applied by managers and perceived by their employees, and (b) how subsequent trust impacts job effectiveness through the social control mechanisms of stewardship climate and psychological contracting. Our conceptual model and distilled propositions provide avenues for future research to examine the influence of managerial trust-building activities and the mediating role of previously unexplored controls (i.e., stewardship climate and psychological contract) on employee effectiveness.

Operational Control and Trust Dynamics

This paper demonstrates that the ways managers combine particular applications operational controls and trust-building activities directly influence their subordinates’ trust and control perceptions. When managers either apply outcome controls and demonstrate credibility or apply clan controls and demonstrate consideration, they increase levels of subordinate trust and decrease subordinate perceptions that they are being controlled by their managers. However, when managers apply behavior controls and demonstrate their capability, managers decrease levels of subordinate trust and increase subordinate perceptions that they are being controlled by their managers. We argue that a key element determining these relationships is the level of behavioral autonomy that managers provide to their subordinates. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this perspective advances research on organizational control, organizational trust, and control-trust dynamics.

Willingness to vaccinate against Covid-19: A qualitative study involving older adults from Southern Switzerland

BackgroundThe Covid-19 pandemic is causing unprecedented disruption and suffering to people across the globe, with a disproportionate toll on the elderly. The development and equitable distribution of a vaccine seems to be the most promising and sustainable route ahead. The goal of this study was to explore older adults’ attitudes towards and beliefs regarding the Covid-19 vaccination in Southern Switzerland. MethodsWe conducted a qualitative study employing telephone interviews to understand older adults’ attitudes towards and beliefs about the Covid-19 vaccine. No Covid-19 vaccine had yet been approved at the moment of data collection. A convenience and snowball sample of 19 participants was recruited. Participants had to be at least 65 years old, without any hearing impairments, and be resident in the Canton of Ticino. ResultsMost participants were women (n = 12), Swiss nationals (n = 14), retired (n = 18), resident in urban areas (n = 14), and had obtained a secondary school degree (n = 14). The average age was 75 (SD = 6.04; range = 64–85). We found that the majority of participants were in favor of the vaccination and highlighted its positive consequences, such as the abandonment of current freedom-limiting protective measures. Those participants who were against or unsure about the vaccination had concerns regarding the novelty of the vaccine and its impact on its safety and efficacy, stated they would prefer other protective measures rather than the vaccination, and identified contextual and individual drivers of their concerns. ConclusionsIndependently from the outbreak’s trajectory, efforts to foster vaccination acceptance should focus on the benefit of relapsing freedom-limiting protective measures. Vaccination strategies should be grounded in an evidence-based, participatory approach, ongoing community engagement, trust-building activities, and communication about vaccine developments and how the vaccine will be combined with other outbreak response measures.

CRM system and potential customer loyalty trends: Some evidence of customer engagement

This present paper aims to validate the relationship between loyalty programs and to recognize the value of implementing CRM systems by the dimensions of CRM realize and commercial banks. This article also presents an emerging CRM research literature as CRM's customer-focused component, investigating the relationship between CRM and customer loyalty. By implementing robust information management, CRM aims to improve customer interactions through a portfolio of trust-building activities. Simultaneously, most CRM literature focuses on banks designing and executing CRM initiatives. The current research explored various customer loyalty determinants but pay less attention to understanding the relationship between product dimensions and fundamental loyalty mechanisms. The study used both quantitative and qualitative data, focusing on Saudi banks' CRM dimensions and customer loyalty. The Data were collected using surveys and interviews. The finding of this study indicates that the basis of the relationship between the bank and customers is the element of credibility and security privacy and confidentiality of information. However, customer acquisition practiced more than preserving customers (contact, quality of service, market response). Building relationships with them, so the Bank services focused on the retention customers and building relationships with them in the short term, because it is a Less cost, and ameliorate part of customer segmentation actual and potential market of banks on the long term strategy. The study enriches the banking literature on how to implement customer relationship management (CRM) in financial institutions. This topic has not been discussed mainly in the Middle East except in a few studies. Despite the challenges facing banks in light of the spread of Fintech companies and their repercussions on banks operating in the region.

Significance of a social mobilization intervention for engaging communities in polio vaccination campaigns: Evidence from CORE Group Polio Project, Uttar Pradesh, India.

BackgroundGlobally, community engagement is an integral part of most public health programs and the social mobilization (SM) intervention of India’s polio eradication program is one such example that contributed to eliminating polio from the country. CORE Group Polio Project (CGPP), a partner of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) SM Network executed its activities through a network of social mobilizers called Community Mobilization Coordinators (CMCs). These were deployed in polio high risk areas to perform awareness generation and trust-building activities with communities and achieved high coverage of polio vaccination during Supplementary Immunization Activity campaigns (SIAs). This paper measures the extent and outcomes of CMC community engagement in SM interventions and polio SIAs.MethodsThis study used secondary, cluster-level data from Management Information System of CGPP India, including 52 SIAs held between January 2008 to September 2017 in 56 blocks/polio planning units, covering 12 districts of U.P. We used five indicators that reflected community engagement in polio SIAs and constructed a Community Engagement Index (CEI). Further, we estimated the difference in the CEI between CMC and non-CMC areas, using Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) and also estimated treatment effects through Difference-in-Differences (DID) method using STATA.ResultsOverall, 78.6% (95% confidence interval (CI) = 78.3, 78.8) of families from the study area were engaged in the polio SIAs and the extent of community engagement increased over time. The mean CEI of entire study period in CMC areas (85.8%; 95% CI = 85.6, 86.0) was significantly higher (P < 0.001) than that of non-CMC areas (71.3%; 95% CI = 71.1, 71.5). Over time, the SM intervention led to at least 11 percentage points increase in the CEI of CMC areas with about 17% of this achievement attributable to CGPP India’s SM efforts.ConclusionsThe study findings suggest that intensive social mobilization efforts can significantly increase the extent of community engagement. The community engagement learnings of polio SM Network may be useful to achieve the desired outcomes of public health programs such as the National Health Mission (NHM) of India, that serves communities for multiple health issues.

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among medical students in India.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine was launched in India on 16 January 2021, prioritising health care workers which included medical students. We aimed to assess vaccine hesitancy and factors related to it among medical students in India. An online questionnaire was filled by 1068 medical students across 22 states and union territories of India from 2 February to 7 March 2021. Vaccine hesitancy was found among 10.6%. Concern regarding vaccine safety and efficacy, lack of awareness regarding their eligibility for vaccination and lack of trust in government agencies predicted COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among medical students. On the other hand, the presence of risk perception regarding themselves being affected with COVID-19 reduced vaccine hesitancy as well as hesitancy in participating in COVID-19 vaccine trials. Vaccine-hesitant students were more likely to derive information from social media and less likely from teachers at their medical colleges. Choosing between the two available vaccines (Covishield and Covaxin) was considered important by medical students both for themselves and for their future patients. Covishield was preferred to Covaxin by students. Majority of those willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine felt that it was important for them to resume their clinical posting, face-to-face classes and get their personal life back on track. Around three-fourths medical students viewed that COVID-19 vaccine should be made mandatory for both health care workers and international travellers. Prior adult vaccination did not have an effect on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Targeted awareness campaigns, regulatory oversight of vaccine trials and public release of safety and efficacy data and trust building activities could further reduce COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among medical students.

The Relationship between Network Marketing Organization and the Related Industry Sustainability in Indonesia

Network marketing in Indonesia, especially in a time of crisis, is massively rising and has become a popular opportunity among other industries. Network marketing organizations, consists of partnership and trust, a community of connections and contact between individuals. This article has tried to examine the potential strategy to mitigate low trust in network marketing organizations specifically in the Indonesia market, where no studies on the subject has been done before. In doing this research assignment employed a secondary research methodology by reviewing previous academic literatures, by exploration and evaluation. For the purpose, 6 main articles and 25 relevant supporting articles were selected, there is an interesting and prominent research in an effort to repair trust in the perspective of the organization's efforts to build trust and control trust framework in strategy trust repair. The result of this analysis showed that the application of trust-building activities studies reveals how trust-building behavior is related to controls and how the efforts towards fostering subordinate cooperation are motivated by different types of controls and display of trustworthiness. It can be concluded that by implementing this trust repair model consistently and with a full commitment, it can gradually restore people's trust in the network marketing industry, sustain industry existence and exalted purpose of this industry can be achieved.

Managing place and distance: Restructuring sales and work relations to meet urbanisation-related challenges in Swedish forestry

Drawing upon interviews with representatives of all the major forestry organisations in Sweden, this paper explores how, in their sales and services, they work to overcome the growing distance between forest owners and forests. The results indicate that increasing distance to forest owners in terms of sales and services work is largely dealt with by reorganisation of the sales process. Through trust-building activities such as modifying office structure and local work processes, and use of new technologies such as personalised forest websites/apps, previously local trust-building processes are being deliberately digitized and implemented through new technology and, in some cases, offices in cities. However, the results also suggest that these processes potentially affect the way in which forest as a resource and a place is constructed and interacted with. For example, it can be treated as an object of desire that is produced and marketed; as a place of knowledge and expertise that produces specific social and sales relations; and as a place of production to legitimize modern industrial forestry. Through this, forest management is constructed as an economic or technical issue that can be managed at a distance from the property.

Resisting governance and the production of trust in early psychosis intervention.

Trust is vital in mental healthcare where uncertainty and risk prevail and where relationship building is central to effective service delivery. Despite its significance, research on trust, particularly among multi-disciplinary healthcare teams and between service providers and users is limited and explored only tangentially within early psychosis intervention (EPI) programs. An institutional ethnographic approach is used to examine how trust within an EPI setting is produced and operates. Drawing on participant observation, textual analysis of clinic documents and in-depth interviews with 27 participants (staff, young people and family members), our analysis outlines how the clinic manager's and staff's resistance to hospital rulings that impeded EPI policy principles were part of the extended sequence of activities that produced trust. These acts of resistance, alongside the clinic manager's reflective leadership practices, cultivated spaces for staff to take risks, share their ideas and build consensus - culminating in staff-designed protocols that produced trust among one another, and between service providers and young people and their families. Drawing from Brown and Calnan's framework of "vicious" and "virtuous" cycles of (dis)trust, we highlight how management and staff responses to vulnerability and uncertainty generated trust through their communication practices and knowledge sharing. We also suggest that protocols to manage the risk of medication non-adherence and treatment dis-engagement among young people contained regulatory functions, pointing to the complex interplay of trust, control and risk. Study implications suggest shifting the emphasis from risk management and quality governance as an organizing framework in mental health to a framework based on trust.

Fostering Enabling Perceptions of Management Controls During Post-Acquisition Integration

The purpose of this paper is to increase our understanding of how enabling perceptions of new management controls (MCs) can be fostered. Prior research suggests that employees are more likely to use new MCs if they perceive them as enabling. However, rapid implementation of new MCs due to circumstances such as mergers and acquisitions can leave employees feeling coerced into using them, making it difficult to foster enabling perceptions. Based on a case study where an acquirer faces pressure to impose rigid controls on an acquired firm, we suggest factors contributing to enabling perceptions. Using interviews, observation and document analysis, we find that positive relationships and mutual trust between the acquirer and the acquiree facilitated enabling perceptions of the MCs. We show that managers at the acquirer actively fostered trust using trust-building activities and communicated their intentions underlying the implementation of new MCs. Doing so helped employees rationalize the controls as tools to help them do their work tasks. We also find that positive relationships reinforced by regular meetings were a way of providing assistance to employees in dealing with rigid MCs. This study contributes to the literature on enabling controls by developing a processual framework that suggests how trust can foster enabling perceptions from the intentions behind the implementation of new MCs, to their development process and daily use. In doing so, the study further develops our understanding of the relationship between enabling control and trust and helps understand how rigid controls can be implemented without generating mistrust.

Trust trumps concern: findings from a seven-country study on consumer consent to ‘digital native’ vs. ‘digital immigrant’ service providers

ABSTRACTMany service providers (e.g. mobile network operators) want to turn their business into fully digitalised regimes and offer personalised services. To do so they need access to the consumers’ personal data and must explicitly ask consumers for consent. In this cross-national study, including representative samples from seven countries covering Scandinavia, Central-Eastern Europe and South-Eastern Asia, we investigate the effect of trust vs. privacy concerns and the moderating impact of culture when consents are requested. The study shows that trust in service provider has stronger impact on consent giving than privacy concerns, and indicates that ‘digital native’ more than ‘digital immigrant’ providers should focus on trust building activities when they enter countries with an individualistic culture. The analyses were made within a PLS-SEM framework.

Making higher education markets: trust-building strategies of private companies to enter the public sector

This article examines the growth of the higher education industry and specifically the expansion of private companies in the higher education sector. The higher education industry consists of diverse, multiple and variegated markets. Much of the literature concentrates on markets in which universities are increasingly sellers of products and services. This article contributes new knowledge to the field by focusing on the other side of the industry, namely on how universities are increasingly buyers. It specifically focuses on the market-making processes in the time of market emergence or initial market construction and argues that trust is a key constitutive element of market relations. Empirically, it analyses private companies’ strategies of penetrating the higher education sector to establish a market and network relations with public universities through trust-building activities. Twenty-two interviews with representatives of private companies from eight countries selling products and services in higher education were conducted. The analysis shows companies have developed three groups of sophisticated strategies to produce their trustworthiness: signalling similarity and integrity, exhibiting competence and commitment and forming an emotional connection. Through these, they aim to advance their markets and consequently contribute to the construction and expansion of the global higher education industry.

To control and build trust: How managers use organizational controls and trust-building activities to motivate subordinate cooperation

This paper describes how managers attempt to motivate subordinate cooperation through the actions they take to apply controls and build trust. Results obtained from interviews and a survey of practicing managers detail how managers work to motivate particular types of subordinate cooperation using specific forms of control and demonstrations of their trustworthiness. These results also indicate that relationships between the forms of cooperation managers seek to promote and their demonstrations of trustworthiness are mediated by the controls they apply. Three relationships are identified in this study. Managers' applications of results controls mediate the relationship between their desires to motivate superior-subordinate work coordination and their demonstrations of reliability; 2. Managers' applications of action controls mediate the relationship between their desires to motivate subordinate job engagement and their demonstrations of competence; 3. Managers' applications of personnel controls mediate the relationship between their desires to motivate positive interpersonal relationships with their subordinates and their demonstrations of benevolence. These findings advance our knowledge of fundamental relationships in control-trust dynamics by presenting observations of managers' trust-building activities, displaying how managers' trust-building activities are related to the controls they apply, and delineating how managers attempt to motivate subordinate cooperation through applications of particular forms of controls and demonstrations of their trustworthiness.

Post-implementation analysis: dependence and trust in VMI context

PurposeMore than two decades long technological improvements in information sharing have not yet ensured a flawless execution of vendor managed inventory (VMI) and left interested parties wondering about the reasons of poor results. Although VMI is a collaborative tool, the relational factors in a VMI setting have not received enough attention due to challenges in obtaining relational buyer-supplier data in addition to extant focus on analytical approaches. The purpose of this paper is to investigate post-implementation relational factors in order to extract relevant insights.Design/methodology/approachAccounting for the duration of the VMI relationship, the authors focus on two dimensions of VMI often ignored post-implementation: dependence of the buyer on the VMI-supplier and trust of the buyer in the VMI-supplier. Cross-sectional data were collected using a survey collected from distributors mostly in auto and electrical supply industries, which have their inventories managed by manufacturers through VMI arrangements. The sample was obtained from a leading third-party VMI-platform service provider that serves thousands of distributor-manufacturer locations with billions of dollars in sales orders. Multiple ordinary least squares regression has been used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThis paper provides empirical support that in the post-implementation stage, longer VMI relationships are associated with higher distributor dependence on the manufacturer. In addition, too much dependence could actually hurt the distributor’s trust in the manufacturer.Practical implicationsThe authors propose that distributors maintain some of the purchasing and inventory management skills in house to limit their dependencies on the manufacturers. Manufacturers should also invest in trust-building activities, such as regular communications with distributors.Originality/valueThis is the first study providing empirical evidence on the positive association between length of VMI relationship and buyer dependence on the supplier, and curvilinear dependence-trust link in a post-implementation VMI context.

Understanding women veterans' preferences for peer support interventions to promote heart healthy behaviors: A qualitative study.

Peer support may be an effective strategy to improve heart healthy behaviors among populations who have a strong communal identity, such as women veterans. Women veterans are a particularly important group to target as they are the fastest growing sub-population within the Veterans Affairs healthcare system. Our goal was to identify aspects of peer support and modalities for providing peer support that are preferred by women veterans at risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). In 2016, we conducted 25 semi-structured individual interviews with women veterans from the Durham VA Healthcare System aged 35–64 who were at risk of CVD, defined as presence of at least one of the following: hypertension, hyperlipidemia, obesity (BMI ≥ 30), non-insulin dependent diabetes or prediabetes, or current smoking. Interview guide design and data analysis involved conventional content analysis. Important themes for effective peer partnerships included sharing a common behavior change goal, the need for trust between peers, compatibility around level of engagement, maintaining a positive attitude, and the need for accountability. Peer support interventions may prove beneficial to address the burden of common and preventable conditions such as CVD. Among women veterans, peer support interventions should account for individual preferences in peer matching and provide opportunities for peers to engage in relationship building in-person initially through trust-building activities.

A Repertoire of Marketers' Trust-Building Strategies Within The Sales-Marketing Interface

Examining how sales and marketing personnel interrelate is analogous to studying intergroup cooperation wherein two groups – sales and marketing – are required to work cooperatively to achieve specific firm-level objectives. While extensive literature in psychology and management has implied that trust is an important precursor of enhanced intergroup cooperation, no extant scholarly work has explicated the specific activities sales and marketing personnel may engage in to build trust within the sales-marketing interface (SMI). We use qualitative methodology and in-depth interview data collected from 29 sales and marketing executives in Saudi Arabia to investigate the specific activities that may help marketers build trust with their sales counterparts and signal to them that they are a dependable partner. Study findings suggest that when marketers (a) act as salespeople's ambassadors to senior leaders; (b) stay invested in salespeople's success; and (c) act as a semipermeable barrier between salespeople and the leadership, they are able to engender trust with salespeople. In addition to providing a preliminary thesis regarding how marketers may build trust within SMI, study findings highlight how the specific trust-building activities may contribute to strategic phenomena such as marketing-strategy making, sales buy-in of marketing strategies, and organizational learning.