Trust relationships in inter-organizational learning alliance — using the bicycle industry’s A-Team as example

Trust has been an important deterrent to opportunistic behavior between organizations and a substitute for hierarchical governance with market and efficiency implications (Larsson, 1998). The focus of this study is to discuss the trust relationship in the R&D alliances. In order to explore this theme, this study employed the case study methodology. The data collection methods include the deep interviews and document analysis. We choose is the inter-organizational bicycle R&D team called A-Team. Through thematic and conceptual analysis of the interview data, we present and describe how the A-Team built up the trust mechanism.