To Boldly Trust Which No One Has Trusted Before : Trust in Business to Business Relationship from Social Interaction to Social Cognition

Purpose:The purpose of this master dissertation is to examine current research on trust and its building process in business to business relationship from marketing and behavioral sciences perspectives. Research Questions: (1) What relationships do inter-organizational trust and inter-personal trust have? (2) How trust is built from perspectives of business and behavioral sciences? (3) What benefits and limitations do trust researches in behavioral sciences have, comparing to trust research in marketing? Research Design/Methodology: Qualitative research conducted a literature review between business administration and behavioral sciences, and interdisciplinary interviews with nine scholars and four business managers. Meanwhile, criteria are generated to ensure research quality. Findings: The finding of this research claims that interpersonal and interorganizational trusts are linked with organizational learning theory. Trust-building process is a social cognition sequence, which developed based on theory of social cognition and social interaction. A conceptual framework of trust-building process on the basis of social cognition was developed. Managerial Implications: This research suggests that mangers need to improve companies’ learning and cognition capability in order to identify new business opportunities, reduce the risk on mistakenly trust ineptitude partners, and increase companies’ competitive advantages