Interpersonal Action Across Organizational Boundaries: Threat and Trust in the Context of Social Network Diversity
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4292-03.pdf
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270.48 KB
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Checksum (MD5)
74eaa5d3f19b4f85cc647cda7d793034
Author(s)
Williams, Michele
Date Issued
March 21, 2003
Series/Report no.
MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper;4292-03
Abstract
This article integrates strategic factors influencing trust with social contextual factors to
create a broader understanding of interpersonal trust across organizational boundaries.
In contrast to more passive models of trust development, it introduces the construct of
threat-reducing behavior as an active interpersonal strategy for building and maintaining
trust. Using a sample of 207 executive-level boundary spanners working on
knowledgebased projects, it finds a positive relationship between threat-reducing
behavior and interpersonal trust across organizational boundaries. The study also
considers contextual effects by investigating the network density and demographic
composition of a boundary spanner's social network of key counterparts from a
partner organization. It proposes and demonstrates support for both negative and
positive effects of network demographic diversity on trust.
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