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Interpersonal Action Across Organizational Boundaries: Threat and Trust in the Context of Social Network Diversity

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  • Williams, Michele

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Williams, Michele, 2003. "Interpersonal Action Across Organizational Boundaries: Threat and Trust in the Context of Social Network Diversity," Working papers 4292-03, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:mit:sloanp:1840
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1840
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