Interorganizational Trust in Business Relations: Cooperation and Coopetition

This study aims to answer the question: How level and character of interorganizational trust in different groups of partners influences a firm’s collaboration expressed by cooperation and coopetition. The literature suggests many factors determining the interorganizational trust, but our results, based on research conducted in 53 companies operating in Poland, grouped them into three different variables: the level of trust in a particular group of partners from the value network, the general trust in a potential partner, and the general trust in collaboration. Our findings also show that if the level of trust in a particular group of partners (i.e., suppliers, customers, other non-competitive partners) increases, the partnership cooperation with particular group is greater, and similarly if the level of trust in competitors increases, the inclination to coopetition is greater. Moreover, the other variables of interorganizational trust are not significant in this context.