Anna Brattström

SIMILAR, YET DIFFERENT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ROLE OF TRUST IN RADICAL AND INCREMENTAL PRODUCT INNOVATION

Trust within teams is a central performance driver in product innovation. In this paper, we examine the antecedents to and performance implications of trust in firms engaged in radical innovation compared to those working towards incremental innovations. Our findings suggest that systematic processes and structures are significantly linked to trust in firms conducting radical innovation, but not so in firms conducting incremental innovation. Our findings also indicate that trust is significantly linked to business performance in radical innovation firms, although we do not find that the link between trust and performance is stronger for radical innovation firms, compared to incremental innovation firms. A central contribution of our study is therefore a better understanding of how trust operates differently in radical innovation firms, compared to incremental innovation firms. Our findings are of interest to research on radical innovation management, as well as to researchers studying the role of trust in a context of product innovation.

Externally Acquired or Internally Generated? Knowledge Development and Perceived Environmental Dynamism in New Venture Innovation:

We investigate the relative importance of external market knowledge acquisition and internal knowledge generation in new venture innovation. We argue that the effectiveness of externally acquired knowledge is less important in environments that are perceived as highly dynamic. To test our model, we examine 316 new ventures in one singular, high-growth sector. We find that managers have different interpretations of dynamism within this single sector and that these perceptual variations have important implications for how new ventures develop knowledge in pursuit of innovation. In so doing, we illustrate important within-sector mechanisms and boundary conditions behind new venture knowledge development and innovation.

From Trust Convergence to Trust Divergence: Trust Development in Conflictual Interorganizational Relationships

Whereas extant research on trust in interorganizational relationships tends to focus on trust convergence – i.e. members of one focal firm developing similar trust perceptions toward a partner firm – we shift focus to trust divergence – i.e. members of one focal firm developing different trust perceptions toward a partner firm. To explore trust divergence, we conduct an inductive, longitudinal study of one interorganizational relationship characterized by mutual transgressions. We identify shifts in attentional perspectives and referent categorizations as two novel mechanisms for theorizing trust development in interorganizational relationships. In particular, we develop a process model illuminating how these two mechanisms can contribute to trust development patterns in interorganizational relationships that are more discontinuous than existing models would predict. Moreover, we highlight the constructive implications of trust divergence for interorganizational collaboration in the presence of transgression and conflict.

Cooperation and Coordination

How should we understand the role of trust in inter-organizational relationships? Trust refers to the ‘willingness of one party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectations that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespectively of the ability to monitor or control that other party’ (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995: 712). The prevailing view in inter-organizational trust research is of trust as a mechanism, which entails a mutual willingness to accept vulnerability in the inter-organizational relationship (Mayer et al., 1995). Hence, inter-organizational trust research has suggested that trust makes partners willing to rely on each other, even though the other is potentially opportunistic, goals may be misaligned and the ability to monitor or control the other party is limited (Dyer & Singh, 1998; Zaheer & Venkatraman, 1995). In short, trust has been understood as a mechanism that eases concerns of opportunism and thereby enables cooperation.