Revisiting the Honorable Merchant: The Reshaped Role of Trust in Open Innovation

We examine trust mechanisms in innovation within a number of inter- and intraorganizational contexts and outline the challenges posed by open innovation to those mechanisms. The organizational contexts that we have chosen for examination are supply chain development, clusters, and employee involvement. We argue, through an in-depth literature review that is supported by examples, that trust is being highly reshaped to better suit the growingly open innovation environment, which in many ways resonates with the historical concept of the honorable merchant. Our findings provide a better understanding of how trust facilitates the flow of information in open innovation and show how trust is becoming increasingly intermediated. Our systematic overview provides a rich context for further empirical research and innovation management practice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

[1]  Michaela Trippl,et al.  Regional Knowledge Economies , 2007 .

[2]  Rolf Lidskog,et al.  Risk, communication and trust: Towards an emotional understanding of trust , 2014, Public understanding of science.

[3]  Rohit Verma,et al.  Product and Service Innovation: Ideas for Future Cross‐Disciplinary Research* , 2006 .

[4]  R. Eisenberger,et al.  Perceived Organizational Support and Employee Diligence, Commitment, and Innovation , 1990 .

[5]  K. Puumalainen,et al.  The role of trust in organisational innovativeness , 2008 .

[6]  Ludwig Bstieler,et al.  Trust Formation in Collaborative New Product Development , 2006 .

[7]  S. Shapiro The Social Control of Impersonal Trust , 1987, American Journal of Sociology.

[8]  M. Morris,et al.  Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes xxx (2012) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , 2022 .

[9]  R. Pouder,et al.  Hot Spots and Blind Spots: Geographical Clusters of Firms and Innovation , 1996 .

[10]  A. Zaheer,et al.  Bridging ties: a source of firm heterogeneity in competitive capabilities , 1999 .

[11]  J. Swan,et al.  Trust and inter-organizational networking , 2000 .

[12]  J. H. Davis,et al.  An Integrative Model Of Organizational Trust , 1995 .

[13]  V. Ramaswamy Leading the transformation to co‐creation of value , 2009 .

[14]  M. Fink,et al.  Verträge, Vertrauen und Unternehmenserfolg in Automobilclustern , 2011 .

[15]  Ulrika H. Westergren,et al.  Exploring preconditions for open innovation: Value networks in industrial firms , 2012, Inf. Organ..

[16]  Seungwha Chung,et al.  Performance effects of partnership between manufacturers and suppliers for new product development: the supplier's standpoint , 2003 .

[17]  Hong Yan,et al.  A strategic model for supply chain design with logical constraints: formulation and solution , 2003, Comput. Oper. Res..

[18]  M. Primo,et al.  An exploratory study of the effects of supplier relationships on new product development outcomes , 2002 .

[19]  F. Kroeger Trusting organizations: The institutionalization of trust in interorganizational relationships , 2012 .

[20]  John Bessant,et al.  ACCELERATING HIGH INVOLVEMENT: THE ROLE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN ENABLING EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION IN INNOVATION , 2013 .

[21]  Daniel J. McAllister Affect- and Cognition-Based Trust as Foundations for Interpersonal Cooperation in Organizations , 1995 .

[22]  Elizabeth A. Cudney,et al.  Methods and considerations for the development of emerging manufacturing technologies into a global aerospace supply chain , 2011 .

[23]  H. Tan,et al.  Toward the differentiation of trust in supervisor and trust in organization. , 2000, Genetic, social, and general psychology monographs.

[24]  R. Lamming,et al.  Developing innovation capability through learning networks , 2012 .

[25]  R. Mauborgne,et al.  Procedural justice, strategic decision making, and the knowledge economy , 1998 .

[26]  V. Kumar,et al.  Understanding Cultural Differences in Innovation: A Conceptual Framework and Future Research Directions , 2014 .

[27]  Bill McEvily,et al.  Measuring trust in organisational research: Review and recommendations , 2011 .

[28]  Chris W. Clegg,et al.  Implicating trust in the innovation process , 2002 .

[29]  A. Zaheer,et al.  Special Issue: Trust in an Organizational Context: Trust as an Organizing Principle , 2003, Organ. Sci..

[30]  J. Hervás-Oliver,et al.  Beyond R&D activities: the determinants of firms’ absorptive capacity explaining the access to scientific institutes in low–medium-tech contexts , 2012 .

[31]  Amydee M. Fawcett,et al.  Supply chain trust: The catalyst for collaborative innovation , 2012 .

[32]  David E. Morgan,et al.  Employee involvement, organizational change and trust in management , 2003 .

[33]  G. Ragatz,et al.  An Examination of Collaborative Planning Effectiveness and Supply Chain Performance , 2005 .

[34]  John Humphrey,et al.  Trust and inter-firm relations in developing and transition economies , 1998 .

[35]  John Bessant,et al.  An evolutionary model of continuous improvement behaviour , 2001 .

[36]  Martin W. Wallin,et al.  A man on the inside: Unlocking communities as complementary assets , 2006 .

[37]  D. Ferrin,et al.  Trust in leadership: meta-analytic findings and implications for research and practice. , 2002, The Journal of applied psychology.

[38]  A. Wright,et al.  Making sense of trust across cultural contexts , 2010 .

[39]  Peter Eberl,et al.  The Development of Trust and Implications for Organizational Design: A Game- and Attribution-Theoretical Framework , 2004 .

[40]  M. Dwivedi,et al.  NATURE OF TRUST IN SMALL FIRM CLUSTERS , 2003 .

[41]  Dominic Power,et al.  Putting Porter into Practice? Practices of Regional Cluster Building: Evidence from Sweden , 2002 .

[42]  Samuel H. Huang,et al.  A product driven approach to manufacturing supply chain selection , 2002 .

[43]  O. Gassmann,et al.  Creative Imitation: Exploring the Case of Cross-Industry Innovation , 2010 .

[44]  Kenneth J. Harris,et al.  Exploring the role of supervisor trust in the associations between multiple sources of relationship conflict and organizational citizenship behavior , 2012 .

[45]  Henrich R. Greve,et al.  Bigger and safer: the diffusion of competitive advantage , 2009 .

[46]  Rosabeth Moss Kanter,et al.  Innovation: the classic traps. , 2006, Harvard business review.

[47]  J. Bessant,et al.  Finding, Forming, and Performing: Creating Networks for Discontinuous Innovation , 2007 .

[48]  Luiz Mesquita,et al.  Starting Over when the Bickering Never Ends: Rebuilding Aggregate Trust Among Clustered Firms Through Trust Facilitators , 2007 .

[49]  P. Krugman Increasing Returns and Economic Geography , 1991 .

[50]  M. Porter Clusters and the new economics of competition. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[51]  Tsai-Ju Liao Cluster and performance in foreign firms: The role of resources, knowledge, and trust , 2010 .

[52]  Peter Maskell,et al.  Towards a Knowledge‐based Theory of the Geographical Cluster , 2001 .

[53]  Brent A. Scott,et al.  Trust, trustworthiness, and trust propensity: a meta-analytic test of their unique relationships with risk taking and job performance. , 2007, The Journal of applied psychology.

[54]  John Bessant,et al.  Using learning networks to enable industrial development , 2006 .

[55]  Helena Forsman,et al.  Improving Innovation Capabilities Of Small Enterprises: Cluster Strategy As A Tool , 2009 .

[56]  Nelson Phillips,et al.  Citibankers at Citigroup: A Study of the Loss of Institutional Trust after a Merger , 2008 .

[57]  P. Curșeu,et al.  Does conflict shatter trust or does trust obliterate conflict? Revisiting the relationships between team diversity, conflict, and trust , 2010 .

[58]  H. Kulmala,et al.  Cooperative strategies in customer–supplier relationships: The role of interfirm trust , 2009 .

[59]  S. Scott,et al.  DETERMINANTS OF INNOVATIVE BEHAVIOR: A PATH MODEL OF INDIVIDUAL INNOVATION IN THE WORKPLACE , 1994 .

[60]  M. Best The New Competitive Advantage , 2001 .

[61]  Enid Montague,et al.  How different types of users develop trust in technology: a qualitative analysis of the antecedents of active and passive user trust in a shared technology. , 2014, Applied ergonomics.