An Empirical Study Of Inter-firm Trust In The Business Ecosystem

The competition among enterprises is transformed into that among the enterprises’business ecosystems, in the complicated and changing social-economic environment.Inter-firm trust is the basis of the business ecosystem. Study on the influencing factorsof the inter-firm trust of the automobile business ecosystem and make evaluations tothem will help us to reduce or even avoid the relationship breakdown in commercialecosystem caused by the crisis of confidence in the corporate relationship. That alsoprovides theoretical basis and methods to improve level of inter-firm trust in thebusiness ecosystem. Building high level business trust relationship is not onlyimportant for enterprises to improve the viability but also has important practicalsignificance in improving the competitiveness of the group and internationalcompetitiveness.This study based on the domestic and foreign scholars’ research, combines withthe characteristics of automobile manufacturing business ecosystem, Firstly this paperanalyzed theoretically the inter-firm trust in the business ecosystem. And the papercompared the differences between interpersonal trust and inter-firm trust, expoundedthe connotation and characteristics of inter-firm trust in the business ecosystem, andproposed four inter-firm trust dimensions in the business ecosystem----capable trust,relational trust, institutional trust and learning trust. On the basis of above analysis,the paper analyzes the influencing factors of inter-firm trust in the business ecosystemand built the theoretical model of the facts of the inter-firm trust. Secondly the paperbases on structural equation model to verify the influencing factors of inter-firm trustin the automobile business ecosystem. The results give a good explanation to the fourtrust dimensions how to influence the inter-firm trust in the business ecosystem, andthe relational trust is the key influencing factor to the inter-firm trust. In addition, thepaper compares the different dimensions of state-owned enterprises automobilebusiness ecosystem to private enterprise automotive business ecosystem of inter-firmtrust. Lastly the paper established a trust evaluation index system of inter-firm trust inthe business ecosystem. The regression coefficients of the structural equation modeldetermine the index weight. To evaluate the inter-firm trust by the fuzzy syntheticevaluation model. According to compare the results of the three different automobilebusiness ecosystems evaluation, the paper analysis the reasons and find the methodsto improve the level of inter-firm trust in the business ecosystem.The innovation of research are as follows:(1) trust issues from the perspective ofthe business ecosystem the paper researched the inter-firm trust, analyzed thecharacteristics of the inter-firm trust in the business ecosystem, and proposed thedimensions of the inter-firm trust in the business ecosystem.(2) Established theinfluencing factors structural equation model of the inter-firm trust in the businessecosystem and verified the theoretical model by empirical research.(3) Establishedthe evaluation index system of inter-firm trust in the business ecosystem, combing thestructural equation model and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, evaluated the inter-firm trust between enterprises in different automobile business ecosystem.The research advanced the scope of application of the business ecosystem,enriched the research methods and the research results in the field of inter-firm trust.Through the improvement of influencing factors analysis of inter-firm trust in thebusiness ecosystem the study help enterprises, especially the car manufacturerenhance inter-firm trust by the key factors, so as to promote cooperation betweenenterprises, make the whole business ecosystem more robust and improve theefficiency and competitiveness of the business ecosystem.