This research analyzes determinants and consequences of trust in business relations.

There are very few businesses that can survive without interaction with other businesses, and the nature of these interactions is important, not just to the businesses themselves, but also to the health and efficiency of the economy in which they operate.

This project sheds light on the dynamics of inter-organizational trust by analyzing the structure of buyer-supplier relations in such industries as ice cream manufacturing and distribution, food retailing, and auto assembly. Methodologies include survey, experiment, interview, and critical review of published industry analysis. One resulting study, dissecting what appears to be "trust" in buyer-supplier relations in Japan, has been published in the highest impact journal of both the fields of management and of business.

By analyzing different levels of trust found in business relationships, we see that organizations and societies can both inadvertently and intentionally affect the degree to which organizations are able to work effectively with each other. The impact of these initial findings continues to grow as scholars cite and build from my work in new scientic literature. My work has been cited in over five different major internation research journals in 2006 alone. This impact is also expressed as business practitioners gain awareness of how they can enhance efficiency in their relationships with suppliers and buyers. These efficiencies drive competitiveness and bring greater reward to producers and/or lower costs and greater choice to consumers. In addition, effective inter-firm cooperation is critical to having a safe supply chain in which the values added by producers are recognized by consumers.

Interorganizational Cooperation

unrestricted gift

Tony Simons (Cornell Hotel School)