Dissolving the paradox: toward a Yin–Yang perspective on the power and trust antagonism in collaborative business relationships

By challenging the typical antagonistic view of the informal institutions power and trust, this paper aims to explore the interrelatedness of the two through the Yin–Yang lens.

The data for this research stem from extensive group and one-to-one interviews with Toyota and its domestic and international suppliers.

Contrary to the conventional antagonistic view of power and trust, the study finds a different relationship between power and trust in Japan, namely, a rather natural, mutually integrative and dependent one. The paper assumes that Taoist ideals, in particular the forces of Yin–Yang, explain this apparent contradiction.

Guided by the Yin–Yang perspective on power and trust balancing, the study proposes six management paradigms regarding how power and trust relationships can be developed and managed to increase collaboration performance.

While this research contributes to the research stream considering power and trust as complements rather than substitutes, it introduces the Yin–Yang view of business collaboration into the field of supply chain management in the automotive industry. Furthermore, it proposes practical measurements for the management of collaborative business relationships in a supply chain by taking advantage of the Yin–Yang view of putative contradictions.