The popularity of supply chain partnerships has exploded over the past few years with an increasing interest in the role of trust in facilitating the relationship. There has been a noticeable increase in the last quarter of the twentieth century of the importance of trust in partnerships and alliances in management literature.
Trust plays a key role in fostering performance in supply chain relationships. A lack of trust among supply chain partners often leads to ineffective and inefficient performance. This study aims to explore a relationship between trust and performance based on Knemeyer and Murphy’s framework. The study’s findings indicate that the level of trust is strongly related to the level of performance. In addition, a firm’s trust in its supply chain partners is highly and positively related to satisfaction, partner reputation in the market, communication, specific investment. Furthermore, a partner’s opportunistic behavior leads to a strong negative impact on trust. The study presents some insights for supply chain managers from which they can examine their own partner relationships and provides supply chain managers with an in-dept analysis of how to manage their supply chain relationships.

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