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In the literature on product branding, significant attention is given to brand equity in the consumer context, but relatively little attention is paid to the application of the concept in the business-to-business (B2B) context. Even less research exists on the role of brand equity in the retailing context. Retailers are often seen as irrelevant to the source of brand value, resulting in manufacturers not targeting retailers to help them build stronger brands. Potential occurs, therefore, for some channel conflict to exist between manufacturers and retailers. On the one hand, retailers tend to focus on building their own, private brands to differentiate themselves from other retail competitors and to increase their power in relation to manufacturer brands. At the same time, most retailers still need to create a good image in the consumer marketplace by selling famous, manufacturer-branded products. In other words, retailers often have to sell famous brands even if they would prefer to sell other brands including their own. Manufacturers tend to focus their brand-building efforts on the consumer market to entice consumers to insist that retailers stock their brands, rather than placing any real emphasis on building a strong and positive brand relationship with the retailer directly.

This paper reports the results of a three-year-long research on business relationships, relying on qualitative data gathered through multiple-case study research of four focal companies operating in Australia. The industry settings are as follows: steel construction, vegetable oils trading, aluminum and steel can manufacture, and imaging solutions. The research analyzes two main aspects of relationships: structure and process. This paper deals with structure describing it by the most desired features of intercompany relationships for each focal company. The primary research data have been coded drawing on extant research into business relationships. The main outcome of this part of the research is a five construct model composed by trust, commitment, bonds, distance, and information sharing that accounts for all informants’ utterances about relationship structure.

Trust involves making oneself vulnerable to another person with the prospect of receiving some benefit in return. Contemporary theoretical accounts of trust among strangers emphasize its instrumental nature. People are assumed to trust to the extent that they can tolerate the risk and are sufficiently optimistic that their trust will be reciprocated. We describe evidence from laboratory economic games showing that this account empirically fails. Participants often trust even though their risk tolerance and social expectations suggest they should not. We propose, instead, that trust is largely an expressive act. People trust because of dynamics that surround the act itself rather than its potential outcomes. Evidence for the expressive nature of trust comes in two forms. First, studies of the emotions surrounding trust indicate that it is significantly predicted by how people feel about the act itself, not how they feel about its potential outcomes. Second, trust rates rise significantly if people are placed in a relationship with another person, no matter how anonymous, fleeting, or minimal that relationship is – presumably because being placed in a relationship evokes social norms that promote trust. We end our discussion by explaining a curious fact that participants grossly underestimate the trustworthiness of others. We also discuss possible motives for reciprocating trust and questions for future research.

Building trust and living interpersonal trust are crucial corporate executive virtues that are needed today. Once you have developed and solidified a high level of genuine interpersonal trust with all your stakeholders, especially customers, suppliers, and employees, then you are on the right path of managing and transforming your company. A high level of interpersonal trust between all stakeholders and corporates in a business situation will break down communication barriers, foster serious conversation and sharing of ideas, and will eliminate corporate transactional anxieties of fear, mistrust, guilt, rigidity, blame, and resentment. When stakeholders trust you and you trust them, then you speak freely, they speak freely, and your mutual sustained transparency is a gateway to survival, revival, and sustained corporate recovery and transformation, and steady growth and prosperity. Conversely, when there is low trust, high mistrust, and high distrust among stakeholders in a business situation, communications and conversations are stressed and fragmented, teamwork and team spirit are very low, and the company is heading toward its ruin and extermination. Such is the crucial role of interpersonal trust in business. This chapter explores the crucial phenomenon of corporate interpersonal trust. We review various cases, models, concepts, definitions, and theories of trust from the management literature in general, and from the marketing field in particular, to derive psychological, behavioral, ethical, and moral principles of corporate trust, trusting relations, and trusting strategies.

This chapter suggests that the key to entrepreneurial success lies in the ability to maintain trust-based networks and respect social norms. In elaborating this proposition, this chapter draws on the results of an exploratory study of 30 Nigerian traders to demonstrate how using an ‘institutional’ lens provides new insights into the influence of trust and indigenous norms on entrepreneurial behaviour. The concept of morality which presupposes an understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour is introduced to offer a supple and adaptable explanation for how actors rely on social norms to build trade networks. At the centre, trust was found to be indispensable to networks relationships and necessary for enforcing sanctions. The results facilitate a rich understanding of how a range of trust-based networks relationships and hybrid indigenous norms underpin entrepreneurial behaviour in Nigeria. The study contributes by providing well founded insights into the entrepreneurship within an African context.

Conceptualizing trust alone or as the starting point for understanding both trust and distrust is insufficient. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the construction of phenotypic trustscapes and distrustscapes that permit an abstract exploration of the concepts of trust and distrust using societal and dyadic relationships and perceptions of the individual as the units of analysis. For theoretical understanding of trust and distrust, it uses social and evolutionary biologic multi-level theory. This chapter builds on the existing trust literature in three ways: (1) by triangulating on trust and distrust through the use of a number of research methodologies; (2) by placing trust and distrust in value orientation theory and models; and (3) by extricating trust and distrust from reciprocity constructs, and placing them into separate phenotypes: trustscapes and distrustscapes. These efforts show that both trust and distrust are naturally occurring phenomena, with one or the other predominant in specific contexts. The chapter includes scenarios in Japan, Bulgaria, and Indonesia to demonstrate how micro- and macro-level examples of trustscapes and distrustscapes function.

This chapter proposes a more holistic approach to understanding work stress by incorporating eustress, the positive response to stressors. We begin by casting the study of eustress as part of a contemporary movement in both psychology and organizational behavior that accentuates the positive aspects of human adaptation and functioning. We discuss the development of the concept of eustress, and provide extensive evidence, both psychological and physiological, for the purpose of developing an explicit construct definition. An exploratory study of hospital nurses is presented as an initial test of our holistic model of stress. We conclude by asserting that there must exist a complement to coping with distress such that rather than preventing or resolving the negative side of stress, individuals savor the positive side of stress.

Theories of trust imply that team trust develops and grows over time, yet relatively few researchers have taken on the challenge of studying team trust in longitudinal research designs. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a concise summary of the existing literature on team trust over time, and to offer a conceptual model of team-level trust development over time to aid future research on this topic.

We draw from the Input–Mediator–Output–Input (IMOI) framework, as well as previous multilevel models of organizational trust development, and published findings from longitudinal team trust studies.

Taking a temporal perspective, we consider how team-level mediators and outcomes can both predict and be predicted by team trust trajectories and feedback loops over time, as well as how those relationships with team trust might change based on the existence of other moderating variables including trust violation and repair.

Future longitudinal team research may use the model as a starting point for investigating the antecedents, as well as the team processes and dynamic emergent states, that can effectively predict trajectories of team trust across various stages of teamwork.

Based on our review of extant literature, we provide several recommendations for training and organizational intervention including the importance of management’s consideration of team-level trust in providing feedback, enhancing cohesion, and mitigating conflict.

We provide insight into the development of team trust trajectories and offer a framework to help guide future longitudinal team trust research.

The level of trust in a service provider is an important decision factor when buying industrial services. Especially, the outcome uncertainties of services, its individuality, and asymmetric information between buyer and seller are some reasons that the evaluation of trust is a key component in service trading. Consequently, searching of potential new suppliers involves examining providers’ trustworthiness. This paper focuses on the study of online trust signals used by buyers, to assess provider’s trustworthiness in the context of industrial services. The main research objective is to propose the basis for a digital tool, which helps buyers to assess provider’s trustworthiness by providing a “standardized trustworthiness signal description” and “trust functionalities.” A particular approach is used, wherein different methods are mixed such as a case study, expert interviews, and a quantitative method following the guideline of the design science paradigm. The aim is to propose a useful tool for trustworthiness assessment to enhance e-markets for industrial services.

The emphasis on inter-organizational systems gave rise to concerns about inter-organizational relationships as trading partners became aware of the socio-political factors and trust that affect their relationships. This paper examines the importance of inter-organizational-trust in business-to-business E-commerce organizations. It examines how inter-organizational relationships impact trading partner trust, perceived benefits, perceived risks, and technology trust mechanisms in E-commerce that can in turn influence outcomes of business-to-business E-commerce. This paper develops a conceptual model and tests the model using a case study research methodology. The aim is to solicit qualitative in depth understanding of inter-organizational-trust in business-to-business E-commerce. Eight organizations from a cross section of industries that formed four bi-directional dyads participated in the third stage of this study. The first two stages include exploratory case studies in three organizations in the automotive industry that applied EDI via Value-Added-Networks in 1997, and a nationwide survey of organizations that examined the extent of E-commerce adoption in Australia and New Zealand in 1998. The findings identify the need for trustworthy business relationships in an E-commerce environment.