Cooperative and involved in interorganizational network: a multilevel mediation model of trust and commitment in inter-firm collaboration.

Introduction Consortia, joint ventures, and strategic alliances represent working contexts where managers and employees of one firm are engaged to cooperate with employees belonging to other firms involved in the Interorganizational Collaboration (IC). Motivation to cooperate across organizational borders and sharing knowledge with partners is crucial for the achievement of the interfirm project’s goals (Kinnie and Swart, 2012). Literature has shown that commitment improves collaborative behaviors in projects and teams within organizations, but at the moment few studies have examined the factors that influence commitment in IC. To help fill this gap, our study hypothesizes that affective commitment to IC is affected by two main processes (relational and cognitive). From one hand, considering the literature on trust, we posit that interorganizational trust and trust in the team have cross-level effects on individual commitment mediated by individuals’ satisfaction with the social relationships with other employees. From the other hand, following a Social Identity Perspective, we posit that, at the individual level, the reputation of the interorganizational collaboration is related to commitment to IC and that this relationship is mediated by identification with the IC. Participants, Research Method and Data Analysis Data were collected from 101 members of 28 management teams that governed 28 IC. A multi-level, cross-sectional, research design was implemented. Interorganizational Trust and Team Trust were measure respectively with the scales developed by Norman (2002) and Costa and Anderson (2011), and aggregated at the team level. IC reputation, workgroup satisfaction, and identification with the IC, were measured with Wan-Huggins, Riordan and Griffeth’s (1998), Mael and Ashforth’s (1992) and Smith and Barclay’s (1997) scales, respectively. Affective commitment to the IC was measured with Allen and Meyer’s (1990) affective commitment scale. Main Results and Conclusions The main results obtained showed that: 1) IC and team trust, measured at team level, were indirectly and positively related to affective commitment to the collaboration via workgroup satisfaction; 2) At the individual level, IC reputation was indirectly and positively related to affective commitment via identification with the collaboration. Moreover, the results also showed that affective commitment to the collaboration was positively related to amount of time devoted to the achievement of the collaboration’s goals.