Developing Inter-Organizational Trust in Business-to-Business E-Commerce Participation: Case Studies in the Automotive Industry

Abstract

Inter-organizational-systems such as EDI have been the main form of business-to business e-commerce participation in the automotive industry for the last two decades. Previous studies in EDI adoption mostly examined environmental, organizational and technological factors. This study draws insights developed within the sociology of technology, in which innovation is not simply a technical-rational process of solving problems, but involves economic, behavioral and political processes required for building inter-organizational trust. The transition to cooperative relationships between buyers and suppliers may be more difficult for automotive companies because of complexity, compatibility, long lead times and ingrained adversarial supplier relationships (Langfield-Smith & Greenwood, 1998). Therefore, trust is important as organizations need to cooperate, collaborate and communicate timely and relevant information, in order to facilitate EDI that entails not only technological proficiencies, but also trust between trading parties, so that business transactions are sent and received in an orderly fashion.