I am an international entrepreneur, What could I do to gain your trust? A Review

Entrepreneurial research argues that new ventures are socially embedded processes in which entrepreneurs are actively engaged in information and value exchange with surrounding actors rather than thinking and acting alone... [ view full abstract ]

Entrepreneurial research argues that new ventures are socially embedded processes in which entrepreneurs are actively engaged in information and value exchange with surrounding actors rather than thinking and acting alone (Dimov, 2007). In an international context, entrepreneurs could develop an active role to reach new opportunities (Lee et al., 2001), overcoming their liabilities of newness and lack of key resources such as knowledge, finance and customers (Hoang and Antoncic, 2003; Smith and Lorke, 2007). Substantial research points to trust building as an essential component in these processes (e.g., Ren et al, 2014; Cherry, 2015).
Particularly in new international venture creation (Knight y Cavusgil, 2005), trust emerges as an essential condition to be in place towards the entrepreneur (McKnight and Chervany, 2006; Ren et al, 2014), acquiring special relevance the interaction processes between the entrepreneur and the surrounding essential actors. Translating Mayer et al. (1995) definition, trust emerges because surrounding actors (as trustors) make an assessment of the trustworthiness of the entrepreneur (as trustee) based on the entrepreneur’s attributes that explain why an entrepreneur will be judged as trustworthy. Trust helps entrepreneurs to develop relationships with different actors, acquiring new competences and capabilities and gaining access to a great number of ideas (Hoang and Young, 2000). Furthermore, trust also helps to reach information that permit the entrepreneurial opportunity discovery and opportunity exploitation (Ren et al., 2014), attaining resources in the absence of legitimacy (Welter and Smallbone, 2006).
Most previous research assumes that trust is gradually developed overtime, through joint experiences and continuous interactions (Granovetter, 1985; McKnight and Chervany, 2006). From this point of view, the entrepreneur is a relatively passive actor who can reach high trust on the basis of past personal or business relationships (Droege et al., 2003; McKnight and Chervany, 2006). It seems overlook the possibility that entrepreneurs could intentionally develop trust at the inception of their relationship (Nguyen and Rose, 2009). In new venture contexts, entrepreneurs need that trust towards them emerges quickly (Geneste and Galvin, 2013). As intermediary assembler, entrepreneurs need to develop a more proactive role to build trust (Cherry, 2015). Acting as trust-builders (Cherry, 2015), entrepreneurs could gain time, opportunities and resources. In fact, there are some calls to improve our understanding about how entrepreneurs can intentionally build actors’ trust towards them (Neergaard and Ulhøi, 2006; Welter, 2012; Le, 2013; Ren et al., 2014; Cherry, 2015).
We could expect that different surrounding actors will also look for different signals regarding entrepreneurs’ trustworthiness. Drawing on the stakeholder theory, different actors could differ greatly in their expectations and interests (Schneper and Guillen, 2004). Trustworthiness is widely considered to be multi-dimensional (Mayer et al., 1995), which dimension is most relevant in a particular situation can vary (Sheppard and Sherman, 1998; Schoorman et al. 2007). For example, customers may trust an entrepreneur because they perceive him/her to be competent, while employees base their trust on whether her/his management is perceived to be benevolent. This raises an important and, as yet, unanswered theoretical and empirical question: which dimensions of factors of perceived trustworthiness are relevant to which stakeholder groups?
The arguments just cited suggest that the development of a model of trust in entrepreneurial settings is both timely and practical. Gathering these calls, and assuming a positive causal relationship from trustworthiness to trust (Mayer et al., 1995), the main objective of this research is to identify what entrepreneur can do or highlight in order to foster other actor trust on him. Consequently, our work is guided by two research questions: a) what different factors of perceived trustworthiness have been evidenced in the entrepreneurial literature? And, b) what are the specific characteristics, attitudes and behaviours that entrepreneurs could deploy as trustworthiness antecedents? Through a systematic review of the literature, and taking into consideration that bounded rationality makes people focus on a few single cues instead of many complex one, we try to develop a parsimonious model searching for a set of factors of perceived trustworthiness by providing definitions, and identifying their antecedents.
The present study contributes in several ways. A parsimonious model with a manageable number of factors could provide a solid foundation for empirical studies of trust in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Furthermore, we centre our study on trustworthiness factors and their antecedents. Most previous studies on trust, particularly those in the entrepreneurship domain, tend to focus more on the consequences of trust than its causes (Li, 2013). Likewise, those studies that focus on the antecedents typically develop their conceptualization around the notion of trust rather than factors of perceived trustworthiness, and their antecedents. The distinction between the two is important; trust is a trustor’s belief or expectancy, whereas factors of perceived trustworthiness can be seen as an element of projected by the trustee. Furthermore, according to Schoorman et al. (2007), we reconsider and wide these factors of perceived trustworthiness. It allows developing a conceptual model to guide researchers in their future efforts considering various factors of perceived trustworthiness, and their antecedents. Finally, examining the contingent nature of stakeholder trust, we focus on the type of the stakeholder relationship (see Friedman and Miles, 2002; Wicks et al., 1999), summarizing differences and similarities.

Selection of Studies
Following the argument that the major contributions will probably be found in leading journals (Webster and Watson, 2002), we limited our review to the 20 journals of the Academic Journal Guide 2015, “Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management” category, published by the Chartered Association of Business Schools. We reviewed the papers published in these journals from 2000 to 2015, identifying the relevant articles using the term “trustworth*”. This initial search yielded 587 articles. Each paper was assessed independently by three authors which that met our inclusion criteria described following.
• Investigating interpersonal trust in an entrepreneurial context at early stage.
• Including studies that operationalized entrepreneur as trustee.
• Limiting the search to empirical studies on factors of perceived trustworthiness and/or trust’s antecedents
464 articles were quickly discarded from our pool after a reading of the abstract revealed that they were clearly not relevant for our review. After a full-text inspection, 71 additional papers were rejected. Consequently, we found a total of 52 articles that were then coded.

Coding Scheme
Although our review is inductive in nature, we begin using a preliminary scheme based on previous categorizations (e.g., Jenning 1971, ; Gabarro, 1978; Butler, 1991; Mayer et al., 1994; Maxwell and Levesque, 2014). Table 1 presents the preliminary scheme for ability, as factor of perceived trustworthiness.
Table 1. Ability, coding scheme
Functional/specific competence
Related to a specific task Knowledge To recall facts, concepts, principles and procedures within certain domains
Skills To have acquired a proficiency in the execution of operations to achieve a certain goal state
High competence Displays relevant technical and/or business ability. Capable to act properly and with a good result while solving problems in a complex, real-life environment, using and integrating ones personal characteristics, knowledge and skills
Interpersonal Competence
Skills related to people
Business sense
About how business works
Judgment
Ability to make accurate and objective decisions
Experience
Demonstrates relevant work and/or training experience

But, rather than impose a pre-existing scheme on our assessment of the articles, we use the scheme to gain information during the review. Thus, on a number of occasions, category titles are refined and new categories were added when a sufficient body of empirical work justified this. In those cases where disagreements were identified, each disagreement was discussed until an agreement was reached.

Preliminary results
We found 467 sources of trust, and we are just coding by antecedents of trustworthiness. Figure 2 shows an example of our work.
Figure 2. Preliminary results for Ability
Antecedents Authors
Business sense
Is able in identifying the needed resources Howorth and Moro 2012
To understand how everything hang together Curtis et al. 2010
Can create a business out of nothing and make it successful Discua et al. 2012
..//…
Experience
Demonstrates relevant work and/or training experience Maxwell and Levesque 2014
Long work experience in large, reputable organizations Lehto 2015
The investor had already previously invested in a VC/PE fund, in which at least one member of the management team of the new fund was involved. Freiburga and Grichnik 2012
Having foreign venture capital, backing by reputed firms, or having a list of big clients were evidence of strong capability Nguyen and Rose 2009
..//…
Functional/specific competence
Understands the changing market conditions Howorth and Moro 2012
The entrepreneur is good at managing resources Moro et al. 2014
Has very good knowledge of the market in which they operate Howorth and Moro 2012
To use language effectively Altinay 2008
..//…
Interpersonal Competence
Use of social network. Rely on informal networks (e.g., friends) to learn about this partner Nguyen and Rose 2009
Leadership ability Payne et al. 2009
Understanding of the concept of partnership Curtis et al. 2010
..//…
Judgment
Confirms ability to make accurate and objective decisions Maxwell and Levesque 2014
..//…