The role of trust in development of collaborative buyer : supplier relationship

Abstract

In any relationship between organizations, trust is considered as the root. It is due to the fact that the way they think and behave with other partners depends a lot on their trust in those involved parties. In fact, the firms will never talk or collaborate with those they do not trust, instead they will behave carefully, and pay attention to every spoken word. It means that organization is likely not to hesitate to collaborate with those who absolutely believes on them. Therefore, it can be found that trust is at an important position in any relationship, especially collaborative relationship between the purchasers and the vendors, even in its building and developing process.

The aim of this thesis is to explore how trust is manifested in collaborative relationships through the lenses of TCE. From then, it aims to understand how important trust is in the growth of collaborative buyer – supplier relationship. In order to gain insights into the knowledge, this thesis use qualitative research method, in which data will be mainly collected from the interview sent to both buying firms and supplying ones. In addition, what mainly concentrated on in this thesis are transaction costs, trust concept, the way to establish and retain it, collaborative buyer – supplier relationship, as well as some essential elements leading to its success and the stages in development and assessment of collaborative partnership.