It has become increasingly common for companies to participate in strategic networks as a means for obtaining the advantages associated to this kind of arrangement. However, another dimension of this arrangement has surfaced, i.e. the occurence of conflicts deriving from the close relationship in such networks. But trust emerges as a possible way of mitigating these conflicts. Thus, the aim of this research is to verify, according to the view of shopping center store owners, which are the most significant dimensions of trust in order to reduce the possibility of conflicts with the management of a strategic network. The theoretical references present the concepts of strategic networks, trust, and conflict, as well as their rapports. With regard to trust, its three dimensions are discussed: 1. trust in capacity; 2. trust in benevolence; and 3. trust in integrity. A survey with 79 store-owners was carried out, all of them participating in networks. This survey measured their perception of trust and possibility of conflict. The data analysis was done through a Factorial Exploratory The data analysis was performed through the Exploratory Factorial Analysis, in order to validate the constructs and their dimensions, as well as through a Multiple Regression Analysis to test the proposed hypotheses. Only the trust in benevolence presented statistical significance. Three findings are worth highlighting. The first refers to the validation of the three dimensional trust model proposed by Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995). The second was the corroborated hypothesis that trust in benevolence contributes to the mitigation of possible conflicts. Thus, the store owners belief that the network management is interested in their well being decreases the possibility of conflicts. The third one indicates that other variables not included in this model are important for the mitigation of conflicts, since its explanatory power was about 15%. These findings are important to the understanding of the networks, because they point to the complexity of the concept trust, highlighting the importance of solving conflicts. Among the main constraints for this research are the sample size and the impossibility of generalization.
Trust; Conflict; Strategic networks; Survey; Mall
