The bright side of trust‐less relationships: A dyadic investigation of the role of trust congruence on supplier knowledge acquisition across borders
研究发现，买卖双方信任水平一致（无论高低）比单方高信任更能促进跨国供应商知识获取，且该效应受知识保护机制和制度距离调节。
Abstract Trust is considered essential to interfirm knowledge acquisition across borders. However, recent studies indicate that interfirm collaboration can thrive even in low trust situations. This study proposes that low trust can facilitate supplier knowledge acquisition (SKA) across borders if it is aligned with the other party's trust. Rather than high trust from a single party, trust congruence—similar levels of trust from buyers and suppliers regardless of their levels—may be more predictive of successful knowledge acquisition across borders. We further propose that different types of trust congruence have distinct effects on SKA across borders. Last, we propose that the influence of trust congruence on SKA is conditional on the presence of effective knowledge appropriability mechanisms (KAMs) and institutional distance between buyer and supplier home countries in cross‐border transactions. Data are collected from 648 managers working for 162 matched dyads of manufacturing suppliers in China and buyers from 24 OECD countries. The findings support the propositions and suggest that supply chain managers should pay attention to aligning trust levels with their partners in cross‐border transactions, and especially do so when lacking effective KAMs and when buyers and suppliers are from similar institutional environments.