Strategies for trust development in international collaborations

Abstract

The paper sets out to investigate the strategies to enhance the development of trust in collaboration activities through an analysis of the development of trust behaviours on a micro-level. Trust can be conceptualised on the interpersonal level (e.g. Mayer et al, 1995; Lewicki & Bunker, 1996; Hung 2004), on the system level (e.g. Luhmann, 1979; Giddens, 1990), the institutional level (e.g. Child & Möllering, 2003; Bachmnann and Inkpen, 2011) amongst others. A focus on the development of trust and its breach and repair within collaborative activities (Clases, Ryser & Jeive, 2008; Jeive, 2016)) focuses on the micro-level behaviours and encounters bringing a process orientation and highlighting the implicit and explicit value systems which support or hinder the development of trust in the particular collaboration and allows the researcher to investigate real collaboration activities through a case study approach incorporating narrative reconstruction and analysis through interview techniques centring around critical incidents delivering richly contextualised qualitative data which can uncover development of jointly created behavioural values which contribute to the sustainability of the relationship. In a context where neither party has the power to enforce values on the other, the process of negotiating values and managing expectations brings the structures of the working relationship into sharp focus illuminating the ongoing process whereby agreed or accepted behavioural values emerge and begin to underpin the collaborative endeavour and help to develop trust between collaboration partners. The initial research has shown that there is a strong interrelationship between the various trust conceptions and that while trust is required for success in collaboration, that can be based on interpersonal, system, institutional or process forms, or more generally on a combination of various forms. The research indicates a new approach to studying the development of trusting behaviours within collaboration activities, reduces the tendency to seek essentialist national-level explanations for success and failure in collaborations and opens the way for further methodological development to allow for the analysis of larger and more complex phenomena through the development of a mixed-methods approach.