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Trust is an important facilitator of successful B2B relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate affect-based antecedents of both interpersonal and interorganizational trust, and their impact on the performance of buyer–supplier relationships. The authors ask two research questions: (1) What are affect-based dimensions of interpersonal and interorganizational trust? (2) How do interpersonal and interorganizational trust influence buyers’ operational performance?

The authors use data from an original survey of 156 buyer–supplier relationships between multinational enterprise subsidiaries and local suppliers in the Thai manufacturing sector to develop a structural model in which the authors test the hypotheses.

Consistent with social exchange theory and social psychology, the empirical analysis shows that affect-based dimensions at the individual level, namely, likeability, similarity and frequent social contact, and at the organizational level, namely, supplier firm willingness to customize and institutionalization of cooperation, are important for establishing trust. In addition, interpersonal trust enhances buyers’ operational performance indirectly via interorganizational trust.

Buying and selling firms may develop organizational trust by developing processes that enhance organizational trust. Individuals with purchasing or sales responsibilities may enhance trust in their personal relationship. However, such interpersonal trust needs to be translated to the organizational level to benefit organizational performance.

The findings contribute to the literature on affect-based antecedents and outcomes of trust. Specifically, the authors offer theory and empirical evidence regarding the contribution of salespersons toward affect-based dimensions of trust and its impact on buyer’s operational performance.

Trust is the glue that holds cooperative relationships together and often exists in an asymmetric manner. The purpose of this study is to explore how to mitigate the issue of losses or increased transaction costs caused by opportunistic behavior in a soft environment where trust asymmetry is quite common and difficult to avoid.

This study focuses on examining asymmetric trust between the government and the private sector in public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Drawing upon both project realities and relevant literature, the primary conditional variables influencing asymmetric trust are identified. These variables encompass power perception asymmetry, information asymmetry, interaction behavior, risk perception differences and government-side control. Subsequently, through the use of a survey questionnaire, binary-matched data from both the government and the private sector are collected. The study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to conduct a configurational analysis, aiming to investigate the causal pathways that trigger asymmetric trust.

No single conditional variable is a necessary condition for the emergence of trust asymmetry. The pathways leading to a high degree of trust asymmetry can be categorized into two types: those dominated by power perception and those involving a combination of multiple factors. Differences in power perception play a crucial role in the occurrence of high trust asymmetry, yet the influence of other conditional variables in triggering trust asymmetry should not be overlooked.

The findings can contribute to advancing the study of trust relationships in the field of Chinese PPP projects. Furthermore, they hold practical value in facilitating the enhancement of trust relationships between the government and the private sector.

Leveraging Emerson’s theory of power and motivated reasoning, this study aims to explore how the net power of an individual and actual, instead of perceived, vulnerability results in asymmetric trust and distrust development in a dyadic relationship.

Based on extant literature and gaps in the literature, this conceptual paper hypothesises and proposes trust formation based on power dynamics and vulnerability.

This research extends the knowledge base by exploring the role of actual vulnerability over perceived vulnerability in trust formation and distrust formation.

The research propositions imply that the dyadic trust formation process is not rational, and trust itself is not symmetrical but asymmetrical. The net power possessed by one individual over the other drives trust. Net power balance determines the actual vulnerability of the focal individual, and then the individual, through motivated reasoning, trusts or distrusts another individual. Scholars, going forward, could explore how trust formation varies at group and firm levels.

Extant literature has not explored the role of power imbalance in determining actual (versus perceived) vulnerability that influences trust formation between parties. The conceptual paper fills this gap.

This study aims to focus on model development to analyse key factors affecting trust in virtual project teams (VPTs).

A questionnaire survey was conducted on construction professionals participating in virtual teams. Structural equation modelling technique was performed to establish the effect of relevant factors on trust-building in VPTs.

Team performance is highly affected by the trust among the team members. Trust building can be enhanced by improving the quality of team communication, organisation culture, team bonding and team members’ characteristics.

The model developed in this study would benefit team productivity and team members’ learning in VPTs.

This study aims to examine the impact of different subtypes of trust on the willingness of companies to share knowledge. To measure improvement in work performance, three perspectives of interpersonal trust, institution-based trust and their combined effect on fostering trust are examined.

A comparative analysis and quantitative measurement are used in this study (with a sample size of 147) to determine which knowledge-sharing channels need to be established to increase effectiveness and efficiency.

This study found that both interpersonal and institutional trust can positively influence employees' willingness to share personal knowledge. Despite this, the combination of these two types of trust cannot outperform the scenarios in which one type of trust can reach its maximum. As a result of institutional trust, trustees are more likely to trust others when they feel protected.

Trust may take on multiple dimensions in different business contexts and industries. In this study, the limited sample size and domain may only reveal some of these aspects of trust, which may not be representative of other contexts.

Few researchers have examined the degree of trust and its impact on knowledge dissemination using relevant parameters. Their focus is solely on the interaction between interpersonal trust and knowledge sharing. As a result of this study, the concept of “trust” was quantified, with more tangible metrics to provide better estimates when assessed in different business contexts.

This study examines how project uncertainties (environmental uncertainty and participant uncertainty) affect guanxi and contractual governance and assesses the mediating role of guanxi governance between project uncertainty and contractual governance.

Data were collected in two stages from Chinese contractors. First, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine construction engineering project practitioners in different contracts as a pilot for questionnaire designing. Second, a cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with professionals and practitioners of construction enterprises to collect primary data. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test seven hypotheses based on data collected from 198 respondents.

Project environmental uncertainty promotes the use of guanxi governance, while project participant uncertainty hinders it; the relationship between both types of uncertainty and contractual governance is the same as with guanxi governance. Furthermore, guanxi governance promotes contractual governance and partially mediates project environmental uncertainty and contractual governance and a complete mediating role between project participant uncertainty and contractual governance.

As the interviewed samples are mainly from China, the study should be replicated using large representative samples from East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of guanxi governance. Further, while the internal consistency reliability and convergent validity of the questionnaire data in this study align with the standards, a larger sample size would improve the reliability and validity of the research results and better represent the overall work situation of contractors, owners and public policymakers.

The results provide insights into project governance research and have implications for construction practitioners in deploying governance-related resources.

This study aims to explore whether and how the two potential antecedents (i.e. relationship quality at the dyadic level and network density at the network level) affect firms’ internet-interactive capability (FIIC), referring to the capability of a specific firm to communicate and interact with the relevant partner firms on the basis of internet-interactive technologies in the internet environment and, at the same time, the following influence of FIIC on collaborative activities (i.e. joint planning and joint problem-solving).

This study designed a questionnaire and collected data on-site from 400 manufacturers. SmartPLS is used to validate the research model.

The results suggest that the dyadic relationship quality and network density of the partner group are both positively connected with a firm’s FIIC. Besides, FIIC is positively related to collaborative activities with its partners.

Given the nature of our data (i.e. cross-sectional), the authors can collect longitudinal or experimental data to retest the hypotheses.

This study gives certain guidance for firms to be aware of the factors that motivate FIIC and use their FIIC to influence their employees’ collaborative activities in their relationships with partners, thereby promoting cooperation performance.

This study attempts to extend the resource-based theory based on the logic of motivation-capability by exploring the potential antecedents of FIIC and makes contributions to the current studies on the antecedents of FIIC, which provides actionable insights for firms to play the role of FIIC in interfirm interactions.

This study aims to identify the driving factors that influence blockchain technology adoption in the context of a supply chain (SC), considering three dimensions: technology, transactions and collaboration.

An integrative systematic literature review of previous studies was conducted. Using three main dimensions: technology, transactions and SC collaboration, supported by the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, transaction cost economics (TCE) and concepts of SC collaboration, the authors categorized factors that contributed to blockchain technology in SC in the extant literature and proposed a theoretical model that covers these three dimensions.

The findings reveal that the information sharing category – related to the SC collaboration dimension – is the category with the greatest number of motivating factors for blockchain adoption in the SC context, followed by performance expectancy and behavioral uncertainty.

The review considers papers published until 2021 obtained from a specific database.

This study focuses on filling the research gap concerning technology adoption as it considers the interconnection formed by two organizations, interorganizational transactions and SC collaboration, using complementary theories to explain the phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of clients' trust, opportunism and adaptation on contractual (non)cooperation with a mediating role of coordination in the construction industry.

A questionnaire was used to collect data from employees of the Pakistani construction industry. Smart partial least square (SmartPLS) has been used for analyzing the data of 270 respondents from construction projects.

The results of the SmartPLS indicate that (1) Trust and contract coordination positively while opportunism negatively influence contractor's contractual cooperation. (2) Contract adaptation and contract coordination positively influence the noncontractual cooperation of the contractor. (3) Moreover, contract coordination positively mediates the relationship between trust and noncontractual cooperation, but negatively mediates the relationship between opportunism and contract adaptation and noncontractual cooperation.

The findings of this research suggest several policy implications for administrative authorities, project managers and policymakers. These authorities need to focus on clients' trust, opportunism and adaptation because these factors significantly influence contract coordination and cooperation in the construction industry. Emphasizing these factors will enable project managers to gain economies of scale and mitigate project failure.

To the best of the authors’ search and knowledge, they did not find any study examining the mediating role of coordination between trust, opportunism, adaptation and cooperation in the construction industry. Hence, the present study advances their understanding in the field of project management and construction business.

Driven by the evidence from the literature on the significance of mobile (m-)payment in economic growth and productivity and at the same time the relative dismal adoption of this service, the purpose of present paper is to elucidate the merchants’ m-payment adoption from the perspective of trust, drawing upon the game theory framework, in the Malaysian context.

An online survey consisting of 302 respondents was carried out to investigate the impact of trust and opportunism on merchants’ perceived trustworthiness using a two-staged structural equation modeling–neural network approach to determine the significance and relative importance of variables. This study also applies a game-theoretic approach to analyze the impact of trust on the relationship between merchants and m-payment service providers.

The results indicate a positive and statistically significant relationship between merchant trust, merchant opportunism and perceived trustworthiness, and a statistically significant negative relationship was found between m-payment provider opportunism and perceived trustworthiness. The findings from the prisoner’s dilemma two-player model indicate that the scenarios of mutual trust and mutual opportunism as paradigmatic of cooperation and defection produce the best and worse outcomes, respectively. An intriguing result was the positive impact of merchant opportunism on perceived trustworthiness, which indicates a very calculative orientation of merchants in m-payment contracting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first attempts to propose a game theory approach to the interaction between merchants and m-payment providers under the framework of trust and opportunism. A game theory study in the context of m-payment adoption can contribute to the theoretical literature by providing insights into the decision-making processes of merchants. By incorporating trust and opportunism into the game theory model, we can gain a better understanding of how they affect the decision-making process and overall adoption rates. The conclusions and implications provide useful insights for managers of both m-payment platforms and merchants in this relational exchange. The results of the present research can provide insights into the factors that influence merchant decisions and guide them toward suitable partnerships for successful adoption and can guide authorities for policy interventions and supporting adoption efforts.