Factors Affecting the Level of Trust and Cooperation in Supply Chain-the Case of Chinese Manufacturing Enterprises

As the quickly development of technology and global economics, supply chains is one arena of competition of modern firms. The cooperation among firms is becoming an important source of acquiring competitive advantages. So trust plays an more and more important role and is the critical factor among supply chain partners. However, trust is facing rigid and awkard status nowadays between Chinese enterprises. Trust is difficult to be emphasized against profit driving with developing of market economy. So, indeed handling cooperative relationship and building trust is guarantee of developing of enterprise, which can help enterprise obtain much more long-term profit as well as obtain reputation. So in the paper, we will discuss how can build these trust and which factors can effect the building of trust among supply chain partners. We main consider two sides that lead to buyer's trust. One is the attribute of supplier including competence and reputation. The other is buyer's communication with supplier. Nextly, a model of its antecedents and consequences of trust are presented. At the same time, we will introduce several research hypothesis based on this model. In research, we will discuss various ways to build trust among supply chain partners and how can these trust impact the cooperation. Lastly, the model is empirically tested using the date of 316 Chinese manufacturing enterprises acquired by interviews and surveys. The results show that reputation and communication have a significant positive impact on trust. On the other hand, trust has direct effect on cooperation in supply chain. Unexpectedly, competence has no effect trust. Furthermore, we conclude with a discussion of the implications of this research and suggestions for management in supply chain and discuss the limitations of the study and future research.