Building Trust in Uncertain Times: Lessons from Vietnamese Entrepreneurs

The radical political and economic reforms sweeping through former socialist countries during the last decades have opened rich opportunities for privately owned businesses to emerge and develop. Since the market institutions and infrastructures in these countries are largely underdeveloped, private firms in transition economies rely extensively on interfirm partnerships. This raises the question of how?in the absence of institutions that legitimate markets, contracts, and private property?managers of new business ventures develop trusting relationships. This study helps address this question by developing an integrative model of trust dynamics (i.e., how trust between firms evolves over time) and testing that model in Vietnam. A combination of different research methods was used to capture the complexity of trust dynamics in the under-studied context of Vietnam. For researchers, this book opens a new research avenue where entrepreneurs can be viewed as trust-building agents, in addition to information-brokering agents. For managers who are working in transition economies, the book provides some insights on how to develop trust with business partners in uncertain times.