The Impact of Trust on Opportunism Across Different Stages of Buyer-Supplier Relationships: A Process Perspective

Opportunism poses a significant challenge in business-tobusiness exchange relationships, particularly when companies aim for sustainable relationships. While trust is known to influence opportunism, its role across different stages of buyersupplier relationships remains unclear in the existing literature. This study empirically investigates (1) the occurrence of opportunism before and after formal contract signing, specifically ex-ante and ex-post opportunism, and (2) the relational mechanisms for mitigating these types of opportunism. This study draws on transaction cost economics, contingency theory, and a process view of trust to explain the mechanism of how, when, and why trust influences opportunism throughout the different stages of a buyer-supplier relationship. An inductive theory-building approach through exploratory interviews methods was employed to address these theoretical issues. Data were collected through 25 semistructured interviews conducted from April 2020 to November 2021 in both Japan and Vietnam. Our findings reveal the evolution of trust across different stages of buyer-supplier relationships: (1) in the initial stage, trust is formed by empirical evidence and relational assessment; (2) in the mature stage, trust is sustained by emotional connections and personal experiences. This dynamic interplay between trust and opportunism creates a powerful mechanism for mitigating opportunistic behavior. By understanding this process, managers can foster trust to safeguard against opportunism relationships.