TRUST AS A TOOL FOR COLLABORATION -In an inter-organisational context

Abstract

The West Sweden Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Region of Västra Götaland have initiated a project, “Ökad Offertkraft” (Bidding Power), in order to enhance the possibilities of economic growth for the SMEs (Small and Medium sized Enterprises) in the region of West Sweden. The objective of the project is to get SMEs to collaborate with each other and with other institu-tions, like research centres and universities, which have cutting edge competen-cies. This will hopefully entail in increased ability for SMEs to improve their bidding process towards large international corporations and this will in turn lead to economic development in the region of West Sweden.

We found that trust plays an important role for the development of an inter-firm collaboration network, as intended by “Bidding Power”. This thesis therefore has two purposes: theoretically, to illuminate how trust could shorten the time frame in collaboration settings and, practically, to give recommendations how trust could be engendered in such settings.

The research has been conducted in the region of West Sweden during the autumn of 2003. Nine organisations operating in the technical textile industry were interviewed regarding their views on trust and collaboration in a context such as “Bidding Power”.

We found the important factors for the development of trust in such a setting to be: benevolence, ability, prior experiences, control systems, openness, integrity, level of asymmetry in the relation and perceived risks and benefits.