Trust types, distrust, and performance outcomes in small business relationships: the pharmacy-drug warehouse case

This study attempts to investigate the linkage among trust types, distrust, and relationship performance outcomes in the context of long-term supply agreement-type alliances between small business dyads. The results suggest a significant positive relationship among goodwill trust and risk-taking tendency, cooperation, satisfaction, and conflict resolution and a negative relationship between goodwill trust and transaction costs. Competence trust is found to have a positive relationship with cooperation, conflict resolution, and satisfaction and a negative relationship with transaction costs. However, no significant relationship is found between competence trust and risk-taking tendency. Distrust, on the other hand, is found to have a negative relationship with cooperation, satisfaction, and conflict resolution and a significant positive relationship with transaction costs with no effect on risk-taking tendency.