Study on Trust among Supply Chain Companies

A great deal of attention has been paid to supply chain management, and trust has been recognized as a key influencing factor. The relationships based on trust avoid opportunism in the supply chain and reduce transactions costs. In order to reduce uncertainty between supply chain companies while improving supply chain responsiveness, managers should endeavor to create new forms of relationship that relies on trust. In this paper, trust is regarded as a process and some critical factors in building trust are analyzed. A model is built based on trust which suggests that suppliers need to invest in relation-specific assets, and voluntarily share information with buyers. Besides, reputation of any partner can influence the relationship based on trust. The paper suggests that similar organizational cultures between companies can facilitate the building of trust. An empirical study is carried out to test the model based on data collected from purchasing managers in companies in Heilongjiang Province. The study provides three suggestions on trust building in supply chain companies