| This study investigates the relationships between industry competitors' willingness to cooperate, as well as their past and present levels of cooperation, and top managements' perceptions of the trustworthiness of an important competitor. In addition, relationships between top managements' perceptions of trusting a competitor and their evaluation of antecedents to trust with respect to this competitor will be investigated. The antecedents include the skill and competence of the management in the other company, the benevolence of the other company's management, honesty of competitor, the dependability and integrity (including unmet expectations) of the competitor, fairness perceptions, the competitor's tendency toward reciprocity or exchange, friendship with the competitor's top management, identification with the competitor and its management, and the top managers' propensities to trust. The study's results suggest that several antecedents of trust are also antecedents of willingness to cooperate with competitors. The study also found that trust is an antecedent to willingness to cooperate. However, the effect of the antecedents on willingness to cooperate was not mediated by trust, even though they were by and large also correlated with trust. The reasons for this rather anomalous finding are unclear. |
