Introduction: Theories and Issues in the Study of Trust

Abstract

Abstract Recent changes in the global business environment have radically increased the demands which businesses have to fulfil to stay in the competitive race. Firms in the advanced countries are facing tremendous challenges from a number of sources: demands for enhanced quality and variability of goods and constant innovation in product development; severe price competition from low-wage countries; and much increased costs of new technology. Some of these demands are also beginning to impinge on newly industrializing societies (NIS). To cope with these new challenges, firms have begun to implement organizational innovations within firms and in their relations with other firms. Among the latter, relational contracting, networks, strategic alliances and horizontal co-operation in industrial districts have become particularly prevalent (Piorc and Sabel 1984; Powell 1990; Ring and van de Ven 1992; Alter and Hage 1993; Sydow 1996). Within organizations, networking, semi-autonomous working groups, and reciprocity are also accorded new importance (Rajan, van Eupen, and Jaspers 1997: 36; Turner and Auer 1994), as are forms of organizational decentralization of responsibility.