• What is intercultural trust in contrast to comparative cross-cultural trust? What is the strategic significance of intercultural trust and trust-building, including the strategic goals and outcomes of intercultural trust-building in the context of international business?
• What are the unique nature and features of intercultural trust in the context of international business?
• What are the core process and mechanisms of intercultural trust-building in the context of international business?
• How do we make sound decisions regarding the forms and strengths of intercultural trust in the context of international business?
• How do we effectively implement the decisions in the process of intercultural trust-building in the context of international business?

The overall goal of this elective is to enhance the students’ understanding and capabilities concerning intercultural trust-building in the context of managing international business activities. We can do so by providing an integrative framework and a detailed coverage of various related issues so as to help the students understand the nature, features, sources and mechanisms of trust-building in the context of international business with intercultural interaction. In particular, we want to focus on the capabilities of managing the trust-building process for the success in international business.
 

In this novel elective course (the first in the world to my best knowledge), we explore the above five essential questions on intercultural trust and trust-building in the context of international business. To address the five critical questions as the purpose of this new elective course, we seek to integrate three constructs into one conceptual framework, i.e., asymmetrical trust, integrative trust, and acculturation as the three pillars of an integrative framework of intercultural trust and trust-building, and then apply it to the context of international business.
 

Specifically, based on the premise that the level and type of trust differ cross cultures, which is overwhelmingly supported by the evidence of comparative trust research, we integrate the seminal ideas of asymmetrical (culture-specific) trust and integrative (geocentric as culture-integrative) trust with the traditional construct of acculturation by positing that people and firms from different cultures tend to evoke different bases of trust with different preferences for different forms of trust as well as adopt different mechanisms and strategies to build such trust, at least so at the initial stage of intercultural interaction. However, we further argue that over time the cultural distinction will wear off toward a more or less shared trust and an integrative style of trust-building. This is the central theme of our integrative framework.
 

Based upon the integrative framework, we provide two typologies to address the specific questions about how to apply the framework to the context of international business. The first typology diagnoses the various situations where people and firms interact with each other across diverse cultures, and the second typology prescribes the specific strategies to manage various situations of intercultural trust-building in the context of international business.
 

In short, we seek to enhance our understanding about trust in international collaborations beyond the initial recognition of the reality that both the nature of trust and the institutional and cultural bases of trust differ across national contexts. We want to explore how asymmetrical trust evolves in the process of intercultural interaction. In other words, we explore the dynamic evolution of intercultural trust-building in the context of international business from asymmetrical trust (as the initial condition and status of trust-building) to geocentric trust (as the mature condition and status of trust-building) via the mechanism of acculturation (as the mechanism of adaptive learning).

Recommended L iterature:

Required Textbook:

N.K. Saunders, D. Skinner, G. Dietz, N. Gillespie & R.J. Lewicki(Eds.) (2010). Organizational Trust: A Cultural Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Required Articles:

Li, P.P. 2007. Toward an inter-disciplinary conceptualization of trust: A typological approach.Management and Organization Review, 3: 421-445.

Li, P.P. 2008. Toward a geocentric framework of trust: An application to organizational trust. Management and Organization Review, 4: 413-439.

Li, P.P. 2010. Intercultural trust and trust-building: The contexts and strategies of adaptive learning in acculturation. Presented at the Academy of Management, Montreal, Canada, August 8-10.

Extra Reference Books:

Colleen A. Ward, Stephen Bochner and Adrian Furnham (2001) Psychology of Culture Shock (2^nd Ed.). London: Routledge.

Stella W.C. Ting-Toomey and John Oetzel(2001). Managing Intercultural Conflict Effectively. California:Sage.

Further Suggested Readings:

Adler, N.J. & Graham, J.L. 1989. Cross-cultural interaction: The international comparison fallacy? Journal of International Business Studies, 515-537.

Berry, J.W. 2008. Globalization and acculturation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 32: 328-336.

Chua, R. Y.J., Ingram, P. & Morris, M. 2008. From the head and the heart: Locating cognition- and affect-based trust in managers’ professional networks. Academy of Management Journal, 51: 436-452.

Doney, P.M., Cannon, J.P. & Mullen, M.R. 1998. Understanding the influence of national culture on the development of trust. Academy of Management Review, 23: 601–620.

Gelfand, M.J., Erez, M. & Aycan, Z. 2007. Cross-cultural organizational behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58: 479-514.

Johnson, J.L., Cullen, J.B., Sakano, T. & Takenouchi, T. 1996. Setting the stage for trust and strategic integration in Japanese-U.S. cooperative alliances. Journal of International Business Studies, 27: 981-1004

Li, P.P. 1998. Towards a geocentric framework of organizational form: A holistic, dynamic and paradoxical Approach. Organization Studies, 19: 829-863.

Li, P.P. 2010. Toward a Learning-based View of Internationalization: The Accelerated Trajectories of Cross-Border Learning. Journal of International Management, 16: 43-59.

Nahavandi, A. & Malekzadeh, A.R. 1988. Acculturation in mergers and acquisitions. Academy of Management Review, 13: 79-90.

Rao, A. & Hashimoto, K. 1996. Intercultural influence: A study of Japanese expatriate managers in Canada. Journal of International Business Studies, 27: 443-466.

Takahashi, C., Yamagishi, T., Liu, J.H., Wang, F., Lin Y. & Yu, S. 2008. The intercultural trust paradigm: Studying joint cultural interaction and social exchange in real time over the Internet. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 32: 215-228.

Zaheer, S. & Zaheer, A. 2006. Trust across borders. Journal of International Business Studies, 37: 21-29.