Establishing Trust during the Formation of Technology Alliances

Technological innovation occurs as much between organizations as within. In such knowledge-sharing alliances, interorganizational issues influence the alliance in combination with interpersonal interactions. Calls for establishing trust and trustworthiness often feature in alliance research, but they can be elusive for managers. Using a case study of the formation of a technological alliance in the robotics industry, we illustrate a model and propositions focused on partner search and alliance negotiation, linking previously proposed trustworthiness categories with the concepts of organizational justice. In particular, we suggest that procedural justice in alliance formation may be more important to alliance progression than perceptions of distributive justice.