Trust-building and communication in SME internationalization : a study of Swedish-Japanese business relations

Abstract: Trust is a crucial element in business relationships. The early internationalization of a firm is interesting as a context for studying trust-building processes for several reasons. The internationalization is related to risks just as trust is. New business relationships are opened up, situations in which trust is a critical element. But internationalization is also connected to circumstances wherein trust-building is particularly challenging to achieve. This dissertation increases understanding of the process of trust-building in a firm’s early internationalization. It represents a view where trust is not an irrational act but a manageable act of faith in people, relationships, and social institutions. The communication of trustworthiness is argued to be one of the critical empirical problems in the early stages of starting up a relationship with a party on a new market. To manage this communication an ability to communicate must be fine-tuned along the way. Trust-facilitators in the form of organizations and individuals can also strategically be used to strengthen the trust-building process. By following three Swedish high-tech SMEs along their way into the Japanese market, lessons have been learnt on how actors have provided a more or less beneficial environment for trust-building to take place and in this way actively affected the building of trust.