Inter-organizational Trust and Authenticity in Supply Chain: Cross-national Research in Restaurants at Germany and Italy

In the literature on contracts and hybrids forms, there is an established discussion of minimizing ex-post and ex-ante risks in trading between partners (Menard, 2004; Gullati, 1995; Williamson, 1996). There is a quest to align interests so that both parties can be winners. Specifically, inter-organizational trust in supply chain relationships is supported as a key element in this alignment which can lead to direct economic outcomes, indirect outcomes or relational outcomes such as loyalty, joint responsibility, purchasing cost reduction, among others (Delbufallo, 2012). Nevertheless, the existent literature had not addressed authenticity as a direct outcome of inter-organizational trust in supply chain relationships. This paper proposes a theoretical framework that conceptualizes authenticity as a result of strategic alignment between trading partners based on inter-organizational trust. As en empirical illustration and a test for the proposed framework, the relationship between restaurants and their food suppliers was investigated and analyzed.