A Study On The Formation Mechanism Of Trust Among Subjects Of Knowledge Alliance

Knowledge Alliance is a strategic alliance with knowledge as its medium. It sits onan important position in all kinds of alliance today and has been used by many high-techcorporations. Problems gradually occur in fast-growing Knowledge Alliance, which aremostly due to the lack of trust. It even leads to the failure of alliance. Classic trustmechanisms can be classified into characteristic, procedural, and institutional. Theresearch into the shaping of trust mechanism in Knowledge Alliance will help toimprove the chance of its success and hence make the knowledge involved morevaluable.This thesis, firstly, introduces the goal and motivation of this research into the trustmechanism of Knowledge Alliance, as well as the current status of related work in thearea. Secondly, we systematically review the theory of the trust mechanism and itsresearch outcome. Then taking the procedural mechanism of trust shaping, we describethe motivation of the shaping of Knowledge Alliance. We propose the value of alliance,or the value that knowledge can create, is the foundation of the alliance as well as thetrust. Finally, we come to a conclusion that members of the alliance sharing the coreknowledge and using it to create economic value will play a key role in mutual trust.Furthermore, the more trust among an alliance, the more competition and profit it gainsin the due course of the running of a collaborative organisation. We use the alliancebetween the HuaZhong High-tech Corporation and the HuaZhong University of Scienceand Technology as our case study, describe the mechanism their trust comes into being,and prove the research views and points put forward in this thesis.