The impact of social trust on electronic interfirm cooperation

Business literature identifies trust as a key factor in promoting electronic interfirm cooperation (EIC). We believe, however, that such findings cannot be generalized to all forms of trust nor to all types of EIC. Specifically, we propose that a high presence of a certain form of trust called social trust may actually impede EIC when it is supported by proprietary-standard interorganizational systems (proprietary-IOS). Instead, the presence of high social trust will encourage companies to adopt EIC supported by open-standard IOS (open-IOS).