Suppliers' affective trust and trust in competency in buyers: Its effect on collaboration and logistics efficiency

The purpose of this paper is to measure trust that logistics/supply chain management (SCM) managers of supplier firms perceive toward inbound SCM managers of buyer firms, and investigate the effect of trust on supply chain collaboration and logistics efficiency. In doing so, two trust forms are introduced: affective trust and trust in competency. Besides, supply chain collaboration includes the three dimensions: joint decision making, information sharing, and benefit/risk sharing.

A path analysis was used to test whether the two trust forms affect the three dimensions of supply chain collaboration, and then, the three dimensions of supply chain collaboration, in turn, affect the logistics efficiency of supplier firms. An empirical analysis was conducted with Korean firms.

Affective trust has a significant influence on collaboration in information sharing and benefit/risk sharing, whereas trust in competency affects collaboration in joint decision making and benefit/risk sharing. Regarding supply chain collaboration, joint decision making and information sharing are found to affect logistics efficiency. Insignificant relationships are detected between affective trust and joint decision making, between trust in competency and information sharing, and between benefit/risk sharing and logistics efficiency.

By classifying trust into affective trust and trust in competency and by incorporating the three dimensions of collaboration, this paper analyzes the causal effect of suppliers' trust at the inter‐personal level on supply chain collaboration and logistics efficiency, and discusses the results compared to those focusing on buyers' trust.