Trust and reliance in business relationships

Purpose - The aim of the paper is to define the role of trust and reliance in business relationships. Design/methodology/approach - After this paper identifies gaps in the literature, a conceptual model is developed, and its implications analyzed and discussed. Findings - One of the particularities of trust is its inherent anthropocentricity. As a concept, trust appears to be more applicable at the level of inter-personal relationships than to inter-organizational relationships. Business relationships involve both inter-personal and inter-organizational relationships. The paper considers a number of other possibilities and argues that there is a need to look at reliance as an incremental intellectual lens on business relationships. Research limitations/implications - Within a business-to-business marketing context, the paper discusses the impact of such a multi-faceted conceptualization for research in business relationships. Practical implications - Marketing researchers often neglect the fact that relationships between organizations are based on mutual interests, and attempt to stretch the concept of trust towards inter-organizational relationships without the necessary theoretical scrutiny. Originality/value - Applying the concept of trust to personal relationships and reliance to inter-organizational relationships, the paper introduces a complementary, rational standard that contributes to the calculability in exchange relationships.