Antecedents for building trust in professional e-services

Professional service providers are exploiting the web to deliver e-services to a larger but also more diverse client base. This has increased the need for building trust between them and their clients and within the firm itself. In this paper the antecedents of trust are identified and matched against strategies that public accounting practices could adopt to build trust. Eleven antecedents for external relationships ranging from trustworthiness to benevolence are identified. A key strategy is to display information about the firm’s expertise, standards and clients on the website. Trust for internal relationships range from the individual to inter-firm alliances and largely rely on providing technological (Internet) support and information about the firm’s vision and values