Trust, distrust, and open‐book accounting in three client‐vendor relationships
通过纵向案例考察零售买家在三个供应商关系中引入公开账簿会计的过程，发现信任与不信任在不同数据交换领域形成并相互溢出，且不信任的负面溢出效应大于信任的正面效应。
Abstract Extant management accounting research has conceptualized the interplay between trust, distrust, and open‐book accounting (OBA) as a relationship‐level phenomenon, largely ignoring that inter‐organizational relationships are often complex entities that comprise multiple arenas of exchange where (dis)trust and OBA can interact in different—and potentially contradictory—ways. To address this theoretical oversight, we draw on relational exchange theory to propose that (dis)trust largely forms within OBA domains where different forms of data are exchanged for different purposes. Trust and distrust may thereby coexist within a relationship. We also propose that (dis)trust spills over to influence the conditions for OBA in other domains. Consequently, trust and distrust not only take shape in cumulative processes within OBA domains but also diffuse between domains in a relationship. Empirical observations from a longitudinal case study of a retail buyer's attempts to introduce OBA in three vendor relationships lead us to suggest that competence‐trust spillover is determined largely by domain similarity, while goodwill‐trust spillover relies to a greater extent on staff mobility between OBA domains. Overall, the negative effects of distrust spillover on the implementation of OBA appear greater than the positive effects of trust spillover. Our study shows that, by analyzing the domain‐specific nature of trust and distrust, future research can increase our understanding of the relationship between data characteristics and (dis)trust, as well as explain how trust and distrust interact to determine conditions for data exchange between organizations.