Trust Relationship in Supply Chains: reflections and propositions based on the transaction cost economics

Abstract

The presence of some partnership elements in studies about integration between supply chain management members has been noticed but it still in a preliminary stage, mainly considering the discussion about trust. Avoiding the discussion about trust is a dangerous roadway specially due to the fact of trust potentially can reduce the transaction costs and mitigate the opportunistic behavior. In spite of the initial development stage of this field of study, this paper, from a theoretical and exploratory nature, aims to announce some research hypotheses based in a conceptual model considering the convergence between trust and transaction costs (taking the premises of opportunistic behavior and bounded rationality) in the context of supply chain management. After to discuss about the theoretical background of the study, a conceptual model is proposed with tree hypotheses to be tested, as follow: i) there is a negative relationship between trust and transaction costs; ii) there is a negative relationship between trust and bounded rationality in companies; and iii) there is a negative relationship between trust and opportunistic behavior in companies.