Concerning trust and information

Since the early 1990s, there has been an increasing awareness in the importance of ongoing, committed and trusting relationships – often grounded in a network of personalized associations – as at the heart of effectively operating business. Among this considerable body of work there is little that considers communication and the associated exchanges of information as a driver of relationship trust. This paper pairs these ideas and extends the conceptualisations of trust and information exchange. The conceptualisations and empirical explorations of "trust" in business relationship literature are problematic and the diverging conceptualisations and operationalisations that have emerged are most probably the main reason for the observed lack of empirical consistency as to the antecedents and outcomes of trust. Operationalisations of trust increasingly focus on the assessment and minimisation of risk. Lacking is consideration of the emotional nature of trust, the way in which the nature of trust is determined by the conditions under which it arises and integrated understanding of the way in which the self-generating process of relationships that include trust emerges and endures. This paper presents an integrated conceptualisation of trust which includes the often-neglected elements of credibility. This enables trust to be grounded in the relationship processes of communication – an approach that is unusual in business relationship research. The paper goes beyond the usual utilitarian perspectives of communication and information exchange and explores the diverse and richly interconnected dimensions that make up the phenomena. Information exchange is conceptualised as a process with obvious activity–resource dimensions and drawing on social exchange theory, clear actor related aspects, including the type of relationship, motivations and norms. These actor dimensions are located within an activity–resource framework that acknowledges both transfer and transformational processes. The interconnections of trust and information exchange are considered in a survey of trading and nontrading business relationships (n=355) which focuses on a particular information exchange relationship in depth. A scale of trust reflecting the relational properties of trust and highlighting credibility was developed as were scales of information exchange’s transfer activities, motivations for information exchange, transformation activities and information exchange norms. Analysis of variance was undertaken to ascertain the extent to which various aspects of information exchange predicted trust. Few, if any, of the “traditional” ways in which information exchange (e.g. in terms of characteristics of transfer or style of communication are good predictors of trust. The aspect that has the greatest effect on the level of trust is information exchange norms (positive impact) and these norms emerge as part of the long term co-production of the relationship itself. This has important managerial implications. Possibilities for management of communication are limited as there are few if any simple managerial actions that can “manufacture” trust. The paper concludes with a discussion of the nature and future of research into business relationships. Comprehensive, holistic pictures of the deep processes business relationships will continue to be invaluable but these can be usefully augmented by surveys that focus on parts of the complex interacting processes that comprise business relationships