Trust and relational quality in international alliances

Alliances are regarded as a popular strategy in international business. However they are reported to have a high failure rate and therefore, getting to know the factors that cause failure or contribute to success in international alliances is very important. This document focuses on the importance that trust, as an attribute of international business relationships, plays in the satisfaction retrieved from these forms of collaboration. By investigating the way trust influences satisfaction, we were able to acknowledge how broad the concept of international alliances is; how important and difficult it is to measure performance in international alliances; what the building blocks of the trust concept are; how important trust is for satisfaction; and also what other factors, besides trust, are of fundamental importance for the understanding of partner firm satisfaction. The data collected from firms involved in international alliances led us to the conclusion stated above. We also realised that national cultural differences among partners are losing importance in the international partnering process.