One way or another: the relationship between trust and transparency in buyer-supplier relationships. (28th April 2023) - Buchholz, Wolfgang
Based on a variety of environmental, technological, and product-orientated changes, there has been a shift towards increased global collaboration between buyers and suppliers. This paper examines the mutual influence of trust and transparency at different developmental stages of these collaborative relations. In particular, it investigates a correlation of trust and transparency. An extensive literature review is here combined with an exploratory-qualitative World Café method to analyse the correlation of trust and transparency in buyer-supplier relationships. We found that the direction of influence between trust and transparency changes in the phases of exploration, expansion and commitment in a buyer-supplier relationship. In contrast to the literature, empirical analysis found that, in the exploration phase, transparency is a precondition for the emergence of trust.