Starting Over when the Bickering Never Ends: Rebuilding Aggregate Trust Among Clustered Firms Through Trust Facilitators

Mechanisms to reconstruct trust are vital for geographically clustered firms, since they must collaborate while they also compete. This research outlines the role of third-party “trust facilitators” in reconstructing trust in cluster environments that have evolved into states of distrust and noncollaboration. Specifically, their trust-facilitating abilities and reputation, when moderated by appropriate process structures and managerial propensities to trust, help demarcate separate relationship domains, which represent new opportunities for trust and cooperation to emerge in relationships previously gridlocked in uncooperativeness. I discuss implications for theory and public policy.

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