What is Trust? A Conceptual Analysis and an Interdisciplinary Model

Trust is a vital relationship concept that needs further conceptual analysis, not just empirical testing. Trust has been defined in so many ways by so many different researchers across disciplines that a typology of the various types of trust is sorely needed. This paper justifies and develops such an interdisciplinary typology and defines the constructs within the typology. These constructs, though defined at the personal level, are scalable to various levels of analysis and may be used in various trust situations, including IS/customer relations. Trust is central to interpersonal (Golembiewski & McConkie, 1975) and commercial (Morgan & Hunt, 1994) relationships. Trust is crucial wherever risk, uncertainty, or interdependence exist (Mayer, Davis & Schoorman, 1995; Mishra, 1996). These conditions flourish in many settings, and certainly exist in the relationship between Information Systems (IS) people and their customers. Trust has been found to be important to IS/customer performance (Nelson & Cooprider, 1996), and is also key in virtual teams (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1998) and e-commerce (Ba, Whinston & Zhang, 1999; Hoffman, et al., 1999; Jarvenpaa, Tranctinsky & Vitale, 1998; Noteberg, Christaanse & Wallage, 1999; Stewart, 1999). As conditions become more uncertain because of downsizing, mergers, and more complex business dealings, the need for trust grows (Mishra, 1996)

Effective Information Technology Introduction: the Roles of Knowledge and Communication

Improving the process of finding and acquiring new information technology (IT) has been called one of the most persistently challengingtopicsintheITfield (Fichman1992,p.95). Inordertoimprovetheprocess,wemustfirstidentifythecomponents imbedded within it. We employ the concept of absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal 1990) to focus and synthesize research in innovation, communication, and organizational learning in order to address the question: What are the roles of knowledge and communication during the new IT introduction process? Absorptivecapacityistheabilitytoidentify,assimilate,andexploitexternalinformation(CohenandLevinthal1990). Itiscomprised ofpriorrelevantknowledgeandcommunicationtofacilitatethetransferofknowledge. Ithaspreviouslybeenstudiedfromaneconomic perspective, focusing on revenues and expenses. Our aim in this research was to develop a behavioral model that could be used to identify where spending should be allocated. Tobuildthemodel,weconductedaliteraturereview,groupmeetingswithpractitioners,interviews,andtwocasestudies. Theliterature reviewprovidesthejustificationforamodeloftechnologyintroductionthatexaminescommunicationandknowledge. Thegroup meetings and interviews helped us to identify the nature of the problem from a practitioner perspective. They also provided support for the basic components of absorptive capacity as we have defined it: prior relevant knowledge, communication network, and communicationclimate. Thecasestudiesprovidedanadditionalcomponent:absorptiondeterminantsthatprovidesomeoftheimpetus to build absorptive capacity. Thisisoneofaseriesofstudiesaimedatuncoveringthedetailsofthe1Tintroductionprocess. Thisresearchprogrampromisesto provide practitioners with concrete suggestions for improving absorptive capacity and thus, IT introduction process effectiveness. From a theoretical perspective, this research addresses the current lack of theory in information systems (IS) innovation (Swanson 1994)andisaimedatdevelopingabehavioral-basedconceptualizationofabsorptivecapacityforuseintheISfield. Inaddition,we provide a foundation for future longitudinal research into theprocess of 1T introduction