Building Trust in Cross-Cultural Collaborations: Toward a Contingency Perspective

This study examines the trust-performance link in international strategic alliances (ISAs) from a contingency view. Departing from previous research, we argue that the trust-performance link varies according to its underlying contingency variables such as alliance age, risk commensuration, market uncertainty, resource interdependency, and reciprocal commitment. Our analysis of 255 ISAs in a dynamic environment (the People’s Republic of China) suggests that trust plays a stronger role in improving ISA performance such as sales and profitability when an alliance is younger, risk is more commensurate between parties, market is less volatile, interpartner dependency in resources is greater, and commitment to the ongoing partnership from each party is higher. Cultural distance between alliance parties does not moderate the trust-performance link but influences the level of trust.