Trust and forms of capital in business-to-business activities and relationships

Abstract

The IMP group's ARA model, with its emphasis on interaction, captures social and economic dimensions ofexchanges. We draw on it to compare three cases and assess how actors act in skilful and nuanced ways inmobilizing resources, given the very different norms of social and economic capital. We prioritize actionahead of structure and, given the inherent uncertainties that actors encounter in connection with resources,argue that trust is a cognitive and heuristic dimension of action, distinct from resources, actor-bonds andsocial capital. We conclude that for business practice, managers should be mindful that in order to trustothers, they need to act in the distinct realms of social and economic capital, tempting though it is tointerpret and measure the costs of actions economically