Interpersonal trust and inter‐firm trust in construction projects

Abstract

Working relationships are important in effecting project performance and cooperation is believed to be a behavioural consequence of trust. Trust, being a quality of relationships, involves people interacting at interpersonal and inter‐firm levels. This is investigated through 10 partnering and non‐partnering projects, using a validated trust scale. A case study approach is used to collect qualitative data through a quantitative approach to help understand the concept of trust. Data were collected from clients, contractors, consultants and subcontractors. Clients and contractors have a tendency to trust individuals whereas contractors and subcontractors have a tendency to trust firms. Inter‐firm trust is better understood than interpersonal trust; but both are associated with keeping commitments and demonstrating cooperation, even though interpersonal trust is considered more important. Partnering does not necessarily exhibit more trust than non‐partnering projects whereas clients and contractors have different emphasis on interpersonal and inter‐firm trust. Therefore, to promote trusting relationships in multi‐parties is to fulfil not only the technological and economical goals, but also the moral and social goals as expressed in people relationships such that a socially safe working place can be created. For this reason, middle managers need to know about trust because they face more relationship problems than others.

Keywords:

• Interpersonal trust
• inter‐firm trust
• relationship
• partnering
• project

Acknowledgement

The work described in this paper was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. CityU 115805 and HKU 71122/04E).

Notes

1. From the pilot study with 60 respondents, regardless of whether it is inter‐firm trust or interpersonal trust, confidence is the most important element that applies to both firms and individuals. Integrity and reliability are more applicable to interpersonal trust while credibility and reputation are more applicable to inter‐firm trust. The correlation test shows that ‘trust in firm‐to‐firm relations’ is strongly related to ‘trust in person‐to‐person relations’ with a Pearson correlation factor of 0.84 (when p<0.001), which approaches 1. In a paired samples t‐test of significance, t = 0.312, which is less than t = 2.201 for a significance level of 0.05 df with eleven degrees of freedom (n−1). The null hypothesis cannot be rejected and it is concluded that one is not dependent on the other. This means that even though the respondents' perceive trust in firm‐to‐firm relations as being strongly related to trust in person‐to‐person relations, statistically, the selected samples do not show a correlation between the two. This proves that the respondents' views of firm‐to‐firm relations are not affected by their views of person‐to‐person relations.

2. See note 1.