Relationship between trust and cooperation an empirical study of inter organisational relationships in vietnam

Studying inter-organizational cooperation in the literature review, the researcher waspersuaded with the commitment-trust theory by Morgan and Hunt 1994.Accordingly, trust and relationsh

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY

-NGUYEN NGOC CUONG

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRUST AND

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY

-NGUYEN NGOC CUONG

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRUST AND COOPERATION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES iii

LIST OF FIGURES iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT vi

ABSTRACT vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Practical issues 1

1.2 Theoretical gap and research objective 2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 3

2.1 Trust 3

2.2 Relationship commitment 4

2.3 Cooperation 5

2.4 Theoretical gap 5

2.5 Hypothesis formulation 8

2.6 Research model 10

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION 11

3.1 Research scope 11

3.2 Research design 11

3.3 Research scales 12

3.4 Process of collecting data 13

3.5 Characteristics of respondents 14

3.6 Descriptive statistics analysis 17

3.7 Reliability and validity 19

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 23

4.1 Exploratory factor analysis of CT and AT 23

4.2 Correlation coefficients analysis 24

4.3 Regression analysis 26

4.3.1 Regression with AT as dependent variable 26

4.3.2 Regression with RC as dependent variable 27

4.3.3 Regression with COO as dependent variable 29

4.4 Discussion 32

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 35

5.1 Theoretical contributions 35

5.2 Managerial implications 36

5.3 Limitations and recommendations 37

REFERENCES 39

APPENDIXES 45

APPENDIX 1: ITEMS IN MEASUREMENT SCALES 45

APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONNAIRE SURVEY 46

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Demographic characteristic of respondents 14

Table 3.2 Mean and standard deviation 17

Table 3.3 Cronbach’s Alpha 20

Table 4.1 EFA of CT and AT 23

Table 4.2 Transforming representative factors 24

Table 4.3 Correlation coefficients Matrix Analysis 25

Table 4.4 Regression with AT as dependent variable 26

Table 4.5 Regression with RC as dependent variable (CT is predictor) 27

Table 4.6 Regression with RC as dependent variable (AT is predictor) 28

Table 4.7 Regression with COO as dependent variable (RC is predictor) 29

Table 4.8 Regression with COO as dependent variable (CT is predictor) 30

Table 4.9 Regression with COO as dependent variable (AT is predictor) 31

Table 4.10 Summary of the hypothesis testing 32

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Conceptual model 10

Figure 4.1 Conceptual model in Vietnam 32

Firstly, I would like to express deepest gratitude to my parents, who always respect

my decisions and support me for what I have committed Their belief and supportshave made my confidence to face challenges and move forward

Likewise, I am grateful to my supervisors Associate Professor Kodo Yokozawa andAssociate Professor Vu Anh Dung for making this research project possible.Associate Professor Kodo Yokozawa has been kindly, patiently and enthusiasticallyaccompanied and facilitated me in the process of researching from the ideaformation to every step on how to do a good scientific research Whilst, AssociateProfessor Vu Anh Dung critically evaluated the matters and logically explained thereasons of my research His advices helped me recognize the limitations and learnt

to improve them in the research Thanks to my supervisors, my knowledge in theacademic research has been truly enriched

I am also thankful to all experts, lecturers and staffs from Japan InternationalCooperation Agency (JICA), Vietnam National University (VNU), YokohamaNational University (YNU), Vietnam Japan University (VNU), Waseda University

as well as those, who participated in the questionnaire survey Thanks to all of you,

I really had a memorable and enjoyable time during my post graduate study

Last but not least, I would like to send a special thank you to Dr Yoshifumi Hino Isincerely appreciated and enjoyed the time and the process of learning quantitativeresearch, economics and Japanese language from him

Nguyen Ngoc Cuong

This study examined the relationship between trust and cooperation in aninterorganizational level A conceptual model was proposed here, which consisted

of affective trust, cognitive trust, relationship commitment and cooperation A total

of 90 usable questionnaires were explored to test the conceptual model using theexploratory factor analysis, correlation and regression analysis on SPSS 26.0 in acurrent emerging economy The study result presented an insignificant directrelationship between affective trust and cognitive trust with cooperation Cognitivetrust was highlighted as the foundation for interorganizational relationship whileaffective trust was emphasized with the stronger impact on relationshipcommitment, which influenced positively cooperation Further managerialimplications for practices, limitations and recommendations were also discussed

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Practical issues

Cooperation played crucial roles in business practices since it can promoterelational exchanges, effective competitions, enhances a flow of information andbusiness transaction (Morgan & Hunt, 1994) Despite its important roles andbenefits, business practicers find it challenging to achieve effective cooperation inVietnam

The characteristics of the environment here was described with some frequencies ofone time deal approach, inadequacy of company profile data the shortage of properprocedures, or the absence of developed infrastructures (Nguyen & Rose, 2009) It

is quite common to experience the late time of product delivery, the unqualifiedproduct quality or the lack of delivering professional customer services from thesuppliers here All of these caused difficulties for focal firms to foster relationshipswith the suppliers to achieve shared goals and have motivations to maintain theexchanged relationships Thus, this research is motivated to find out the key foreffective cooperation to be applied in Vietnamese business practices

Studying inter-organizational cooperation in the literature review, the researcher waspersuaded with the commitment-trust theory by Morgan and Hunt (1994).Accordingly, trust and relationship commitment were explained to be the keys tomake cooperation effective Morgan and Hunt (1994) also proposed importantfactors that impacted trust and relationship commitment such as the termination cost,benefits, shared values, communication or opportunistic behaviors, which helped theresearcher gain insight ideas of how to achieve these keys for effective cooperation

1.2 Theoretical gap and research objective

In the theory, the direct relationship of trust on cooperation in an emergingeconomy is questionable The inter-organizational trust was researched for overdecades (Seppänen, Blomqvist, & Sundqvist, 2007) but was mainly studied in thedeveloped economies (e.g., Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Zineldin & Jonsson, 2000;Abosag, Tynan, & Lewis, 2006) Thus, there was currently insufficient study of therelationship between trust and cooperation in the emerging market economies,where the researcher believed in the less impacts of trust on cooperation as itinfluenced in the developed economies

It is important to understand such relationship in an emerging economy such asVietnam from scientific and practical aspects Therefore, the objective of thisresearch is to test the relationship between trust and cooperation with a mediatingvariable of relationship commitment in focus on the relationships between focalfirms with their suppliers Six hypotheses on the relationship between trust andcooperation in the Vietnamese business context are set and tested It is expected aninsignificant relationship between trust and cooperation in an emerging economy,which will become a theoretical contribution of the research

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Trust

The literature surveyed on interorganizational trust, highlighted the primaryconceptualization of trust as confidence, belief, willingness or expectation onexchange partners to fulfil their obligations (Zaheer & Harris, 2005); however, laterstudies showed a lack of consistent agreements for the appropriateconceptualization and operationalization in the trust context (Abosag et al., 2006;Seppänen et al., 2007)

This research shared the perspective with one of the most cited theories on thecontext of interorganizational trust from Morgan and Hunt (1994), who argued theredundancy of willingness in trust definition and indicated importantly theconfidence; therefore, trust was redefined persuasively as the confidence in thereliability and integrity from the partners that the focal firm exchange with (Morgan

& Hunt, 1994) Later studies were also persuaded with the conceptualization ofconfidence and be applied in interorganizational cooperation (Dyer & Chu, 2000) orindustrial marketing relationships (Cooote, Forrest & Tam, 2003)

Being consistent with the above conceptualization, trust was also distinguished byfeeling and rational thinking (McAllister, 1995; Johnson & Grayson, 2005).Previous studies categorized trust into two dimensions of cognitive trust andaffective trust (e.g., Lewis & Weigert, 1985; McAllister, 1995; Mo ̈llering, 2002;Johnson & Grayson, 2005) The reviews on interorganizational trust from 1990 to

2003 also highly recommended include cognitive and affective dimensions tocapture interorganizational trust (Seppänen et al., 2007)

Accordingly, cognitive trust is the confidence, which is founded on the knowledge

of the party’s performance and capabilities This critical thinking is necessary toreduce the uncertain behaviors due to some degree of risk on the party’s behavior inthe future (Eriksson & Sharma, 2003); therefore, strengthening the relationshipswith their exchange partners Whilst, the affection trust is the confidence, which isbased on the natural feeling from the experience of receiving caring or concerns intransaction processes with exchanged parties (e.g., Lewis & Weigert, 1985;McAllister, 1995; Mo ̈llering, 2002; Johnson & Grayson, 2005) This emotionaltrust is motivated by the partners’ goodwill (Ring & Van de ven, 1994) and sharedvalues (Morgan & Hunt, 1994); which showed the willingness and quality ofinteraction in promoting the relationships

2.2 Relationship commitment

Similar to trust, relationship commitment has been seen in different disciplinary tohave a central position in developing sustainable relationships (Abosag et al., 2006)

It was not forced but earned, which revealed the willingness or intention to maintain

in a long-term process rather than short-term alternatives (Zineldin & Jonsson,2000)

Based on the definition of relationship commitment in social exchange (Cook &Emerson, 1978), organizations (Meyer & Allen, 1984), strategic marketing andrelationship management (Zineldin & Jonsson, 2000), this research conceptualizedthe relationship commitment as the belief on the importance of collaborating andmaintaining the exchange relationship as well as the intention to endure itsustainably It has become crucial since the belief naturally leads to the positiveperceiving toward the exchanged partners while the willingness will result incollaborating behaviors and activities to enhance the productivity and effectiveness

of the relationships

This definition corresponds closely with the development of Morrman, Deshpande and Zaltman (1993, p.316) as the “enduring desire to maintain a valued relationship” and the conceptualization of Morgan and Hunt (1994) as a belief the relationship is worthy to endure sustainably and be willing to maximize the efforts on maintaining.

2.3 Cooperation

Cooperation was defined as the situation which exchange partners worked together

to achieve mutual goals (Anderson & Narus, 1990; Skinner, Gassenheimer, &Kelley, 1992) Morgan and Hunt (1994) highlighted that the effective cooperationcould promote an effective competition within network and enhance the success ofthe relationship marketing Previous research on interorganizational study alsoemphasized the importance to understand how to develop and maintain cooperation

to acquire sustainable satisfying relationships (Childers & Ruekert, 1982) Later,cooperation has been viewed with the temporary conflicts within the process(Frazier, 1983; Morgan & Hunt, 1994)

2.4 Theoretical gap

The practical roles and benefits of inter-organizational trust continuously fascinatedthe study by various scholars and business practicers Trust was considered as aprimary source of sustainable competitive advantage as well as the main factor toimprove the organization’s business capacity (e.g., Barney & Hansen, 1994;Seppänen et al., 2007) Nevertheless, trust facilitated information exchanges,cooperative behaviors and reduced costs of transaction and relationship conflicts(Nguyen, Babar, & Verner, 2006)

In academic study, trust varied from economy, psychology, sociology to business,

(Morgan & Hunt, 1994) In the interorganizational level, the research primarilyfocused on the relationships between buyers and sellers, business and business,suppliers and manufacturers (Seppänen et al., 2007).

Despite its important roles and benefits, the nature of trust makes it risky in trustingtheir partners due to the possibility of uncertain anticipation for the party to behaveopportunistically (Zaheer, McEvily, & Perrone, 1998; Dominique, 2012) Thedegree of freedom to disappoint the relationship’s expectation are still possible(Gambetta, 2000; Abosag et al., 2006) and makes it challenging for the exchangepartners to assess this occurrence (Hosmer, 1995)

Together with the natural risk of trust itself, the risk for investments are even higher

in the emerging economies The emerging nations are still in the process ofindustrialization and modernization; therefore, the lack of advanced infrastructures

or the consistency in accounting or financial information will cause it riskier to dobusiness in the emerging markets rather than in other developed economy nations

That is to say, the higher risks in the in the emerging markets might limit the effect

of trust on cooperation even though primary studies of trust and cooperation indeveloped economies showed the supported direct relationship of trust andcooperation in their nations (Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Zineldin & Jonsson, 2000;Abosag et al., 2006) This belief was also strengthened since Glaser-Segura (1998)statistically discovered the unsupported interorganizational trust andinterorganizational cooperation Mexico

Furthermore, the previous studies indicated the different level of cognitive trust andaffective trust in fostering the relationship exchange and cooperation The structuralmodel of Park, Lee, Jang, and Lee (2013) also found the unsupported directrelationship between affective trust and the intention to use from the focal firms

This shapes a research belief that different type of trust may have different impact

on the cooperation; therefore, it is motivated to find out whether cognitive andaffective trusts have direct impact on cooperation or not If so, which type of trustcan have higher impact on the cooperation in the emerging market economy?

2.5 Hypothesis formulation

In this section, six hypothesizes have been formed to address the research questions

Hypothesis 1: Cognitive trust positively influences affective trust

There was occurrence of bidirectional causal effect between cognitive trust andaffective trust since cognitive trust firstly occurred and became the base fordeveloping affective trust but when affective trust developed to a certain level,reverse causal direction might occur (McAllister, 1995) However, that mature levelinvolved with risk as it based on emotion rather than knowledge of partners’business performance, therefore, it was more natural to see the initial development

of cognitive trust for secure and its influence on affective trust For instance, having

a belief in the suppliers’ actual performance could open the committed partners insharing information actively and openly

This direction, therefore, was made on hypothesis one, which was also consistentwith the proven dependence of affective trust on cognitive trust in an organizationallevel (McAllister, 1995) In the interorganizational relationship, the direct impact ofcognitive trust on affective trust was also confirmed in relationship marketing(Morgan & Hunt, 1994); financial consulting environment (Johnson & Grayson,2005), international trading (Zur, Leckie & Webster, 2012) or informationtechnology service (Scott, 2000; Park et al., 2013)

Hypothesis 2: Cognitive trust positively influences relationship commitment

Hypothesis 3: Affective trust positively influences relationship commitment

The two above hypothesizes are also proposed in the research Accordingly,Moorman, Deshpand and Zalman (1993) emphasized that exchanged partnersvalued and committed to the relationship, which characterized by trust Later,Morgan and Hunt (1994) proved trust as the major influence on the relationship

commitment in the relational exchange The causal relationship from trust torelationship commitment was also determined by a variety of authors ininterorganizational level (Zineldin & Jonsson, 2000; Abosag et al., 2006; Park et al.,2013; Jeong & Oh, 2017; Wang, Tajvidi, Lin & Hajli, 2019; Cui, Mou, Cohen, Liu

& Kurcz, 2020)

Hypothesis 4: Relationship commitment positively influences cooperation

The hypothesis four was formulated To make the relationship work properly andefficiently, a partner who is committed to the exchange relations will cooperate withothers (Morgan & Hunt, 1994) Similarly, both theories and empirical research hasproven this relationship and found the significant influence of relationshipcommitment on cooperation in various contexts (Zineldin & Jonsson, 2000; Abosag

et al., 2006; Park et al., 2013)

Hypothesis 5: Cognitive trust positively influences cooperation

Hypothesis 6: Affective trust positively influences cooperation

The above hypotheses were made In a market where the quantities of suppliers arelimited, cooperation might be taken temporarily in the initial establishment of therelational exchange process In this situation, trust might form and develop in themiddle of the process by a certain period of time with the flow of businesstransactions However, this direction did not often happen and involved with higherrisk for the success of business transaction To secure the business, especially in along term, the performance and the goodwill of the suppliers should be evaluatedprior for cooperation to be established It was persuaded that the partner wouldundertake action of cooperating when trust existed (Pruitt, 1981; Anderson & Narus,1990) The empirical research from Morgan and Hunt (1994) also indicated a directimpact of trust on cooperation since coordinating activities required trust in their

partner The direction was also consistent with other studies in cross-nationalcontexts (e.g., Abosag et al 2006; Martins, Faria, Prearo, & Arruda, 2016).

2.6 Research model

From the above hypothesizes, a conceptual model was proposed to investigate therelationship between trust and cooperation with mediating variable as relationshipcommitment (Figure 2.1)

Figure 2.1 Conceptual model

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION

3.1 Research scope

Vietnam was selected for its relevance with the phenomenon of the research Thecountry was one of the most vibrant emerging market economies in East Asiaregion (Worldbank, 2019) Despite the challenges that committed suppliers mightneither have sufficient competence performance nor enthusiastic attitude tocooperate for long-term relationship developments, this prospective nation has stillattracted an increasing number of foreign direct investments with numerousopportunities

Since it is highly valuable to measure how trust was perceived for the measurement

of these interorganizational levels (Mo ̈llering, 2002), this would investigate theperception from the focal firms or non-governmental organizations that purchased,partnered or consumed the products and services from their exchanged suppliers

To increase the effectiveness of carrying out survey, the questionnaire wasdiscussed and reviewed by the supervisors Then, pilot questionnaire was sent toseveral readers who had capabilities for evaluation and correction This researchalso provided the simple definition of what suppliers were so that the readers couldunderstand better Since the targeted respondents are Vietnamese, a translation intoVietnamese was made for assessment To increase the correctness of the translation,reversed-translation has been done and bilingual languages have been adapted, inwhich both original English version and Vietnamese translation were made for thereaders’ comparison.

The questionnaires were constructed to aim at those, who were responsible,represented or being involved in the organizational process of makingorganizational decisions to deal with their major suppliers To make the judgement,

it was important for the respondents to have certain experiences in the field;therefore, this research targeted responders, who had at least three years of relevantexperiences, hold the position as senior staff, supervisor, manager or businessowner

3.3 Research scales

Hypothesis testing depended highly on the solid construct measurement (Bacharach,1989); therefore, this research critically considered the measure that was consistentand relevant with the conceptualization, met the standard of empirical research andimportantly could capture the respondents’ objective perspective on evaluating theirsuppliers from the organizational level

Focal constructs: The scales include twenty one items that were adapted from

previous well-known research of interorganizational trust to measure each variable

Six items for cognitive trust and four items for affective trust were adapted from Mo

̈llering (2002), which reflected our conceptualization The trustworthy researchfrom Mo llering̈ (2002) was also consistent with others (Sako, 1992; Morgan &Hunt, 1994; McAllister, 1995) It was noted that this research also omitted one itemfrom the affective trust, in which, Mo ̈llering (2002) also omitted it due to theproven in the vague meaning and irrelevance measurement of the item

Whilst, six items to measure relationship commitment and four items to measurecooperation were used from the study of Zineldin and Jonsson (2000), in whichitems reflected with this research’s conceptualization and other notable studies(Mowday et al., 1979; Morgan & Hunt, 1994)

Five-point Likert scales were carried out to construct cognitive trust and affectivetrust while seven-point Likert scales was implemented to measure relationshipcommitment and cooperation All constructs used multiple items, which wereshown in Appendix 1

3.4 Process of collecting data

Mailing and social media were used to collect the data within a month, from 13thMarch 2020 to 12th April 2020 The research followed the three steps At first, theintroductory letter was sent to ask if the respondents were having experience indealing with the supplier in the organizational level Then, the study quickly askedfor their permission to fill the research As long as they agreed, the link of theresearch was sent for them to answer Thirdly, the research also made a list of thosewho agreed for participation to remind if the questionnaire was not filled withinthree days due to their heavy workload There were approximately twentypercentages of the cases that the respondents were required to remind by anothermessage for completion

It was crucial to target a variety of companies to avoid the bias of working in thesame organization, who might share similar characteristics While the studyfollowed the three main steps above, three main networks were utilized to increasethe population The first one was the research’s connection in business A list ofsuitable contacts with relevant experiences was made through the network Most ofindividuals in this list hold the managerial positions and were willing to participatewhen they were asked for permission Secondly, the research also expanded byasking those who have been currently holding the management levels in corporation

to share the link to more suitable respondents within their networks Thirdly, theresearch also received supports from individuals, who agreed to share the link on theBusiness Networking Association in Ho Chi Minh City and the Chief ExecutiveOfficer (CEO) groups at the Foreign Trade University (FTU) in Hanoi

3.5 Characteristics of respondents

There were ninety five respondents that were collected on this questionnairessurvey; however, five unqualified individuals were sorted out Among the fiveunqualified respondents, the reversed question identified two unqualifiedindividuals who responded without consideration In addition, the question ofasking direct working experiences with suppliers in the demographic sectionindicated other three respondents, who had less than three years of workingexperience, were considered as lacking of relevant experiences for evaluation Thus,this questionnaire survey used ninety samples for the data analysis in Vietnam All

of the information was shown in the summary of frequency result (table 3.1)

Table 3.1 Demographic characteristic of respondents

The number of respondents by industry was 29 (32.2%) for manufacturing; 47(52.2%) for service, 14 (15.6%) for both manufacturing and service.

There were four Vietnamese respondents from non-governmental organization andone from German non-governmental organization, who also have experience indealing with suppliers, participated in this survey The rest 85 respondents worked

in business, which included 39 (43.3%) for Vietnamese enterprise, 15 (16.7%) forjoint venture enterprise and 31 (34.4%) for wholly foreign own enterprise

The number of respondents who worked in small business, which has the number ofemployees less than 100 employees were 41 (45.6%); medium business which hasnumber of employee in the range of 100 to 1000 were 24 (26.7%); big corporationwhich more than 1,000 employees were 25 (27.8%)

There were 34 (37.8%) respondents who worked in general executive managementdepartment; 28 (31.1%) for respondents worked in the marketing, sales andcustomer service department, 14 (15.6%) worked for finance, accounting andpurchasing; 5 (5.6%) for production; 4 (4.4%) for logistics; 3 (3.3%) for humanresource and 2 (2.2%) for research and product development

The position of respondent was 26 (28.9%) for business owner or CEO; 12 (13.3%)for manager; 20 (22.2%) for supervisor and 32 (35.6%) for senior staff Therespondents’ years of working experience with suppliers was 44 (48.9%) for three

to five years; 28 (31.1%) for six to ten years and 18 (20%) for more than 11 years

The gender of respondent was 57 (63.3%) for female; 33 (36.7%) for male The agegroup was 1 (1.1%) for less than 25 years old, 53 (58.9%) for the range from 25 to

35 years old, 32 (35.6%) for 35 to 50 years old and 4 (4.4%) for more than age of50

This data also received a comment from a respondent, who is the business owner ofVolswagen official flagship store (Mar, 2020) that “Selecting right suppliers inVietnam market is not easy, there are a lot of problems with pricing, relationshipproblems, legal, commission and so on It's very important to choose legitimatesuppliers for security” This comment has become valuable to the research since itstrengthened the belief in the challenges in doing business the case of Vietnam.

3.6 Descriptive statistics analysis

This part summarized the description of data sample The mean and standarddeviations of each construct item, which were determined to access thecharacteristic description, were shown on the table 3.2

Table 3.2 Mean and standard deviation

In general, mean value of the each question represented the numbers for agreements

or disagreement on each scale item On average, the mean of trust, which includedaffective trust and cognitive trust scored more than 3 on the scale from one to five(strongly disagree to strongly agree); indicated that the degree of agreements frommajority of respondents with the content of question items The standard deviation

on each item of cognitive trust was considered as being moderate (the majority isapproximately 1) while the standard deviation on each item of affective trust wasconsidered as low (the majority of standard deviation was less than 1)

The mean of relationship commitment and cooperation with the majority scoredmore than 5 on the scale from one to seven (strongly disagree to strongly agree) alsoshowed a good level of agreement on the content of the question There was onlyone question ‘RC7’, which had the mean score of 2.01, showed the disagreement ofthe research question This was reasonable since it was a reversed question, whichwas designed on the purpose of testing the answer consistence with other questionsfrom the respondents The table also recorded a low standard deviation (less than 1)

on the majority of each items of relationship commitment and cooperation

3.7 Reliability and validity

This research carefully processed the selection of respondents and invitedparticipants from a variety of companies to insure data reliability and validity.Interorganizational trust has been a complex context and its assessment depended

on the individual informants, who might respond subjectively the generalizationabout organizational level issues (Seppänen et al., 2007) A single-informant biasmight lead to the severe obstacles; therefore, this study made high efforts inobtaining reliable information from careful process of selecting right respondents

The multi-items were selected from reputable theory and authors to measure eachvariance The reversed question was made to check the consistency of therespondents In addition, the research also required the respondents to register email

in order to access questionnaire items and the name of their company where theyrepresented to improve their responsibility in answering This study also had thequestion of asking direct working experience with suppliers to limit the case wherethey might have lots of experience in their areas but not in this field

The content and construct validity test were taken to increase the reliability andvalidity The sufficient number of reliable literature was selected, reviewed andused thoroughly All of question items were under revision of supervisors.Nevertheless, five experienced friends were invited to do a pilot survey beforeimplementation.

Furthermore, Cronbach’s coefficient alpha was employed to measure the internalconsistency or inter-correlation for the scale within same construct All of theinformation in this section was shown on table 3.3

Table 3.3 Cronbach’s Alpha

Item Corrected Item- Cronbach's Alpha if Cronbach's N of

Total Correlation Item Deleted Alpha Items

Source: Summary result of descriptive analysis on SPSS version 26.0

According to Churchill (1979), the consistency with an alpha values of 0.70 orhigher was considered as being adequate Accordingly, the analysis showedqualification of cognitive trust (CT), affective trust (AT), and relationshipcommitment (RC) The researched recorded the high reliability of CT, AT and RCwhich the alpha value of more than 0.87 Specifically, the table 3.3 showed theCronback’s coefficient alpha of 0.898 for CT; 0.874 for AT and 0.758 for RC

It was noted on the Cronback’s coefficient alpha that RC7 has the lowest value for

“Mean” (2.01) and a value near the middle for “Std Deviation” (0.989) As arequirement in analysis, the corrected item of total correlation must be more than0.3 if the item deleted was over 0.758; therefore, when the component RC7 wasextracted, Cronbach’s Alpha value increased to 0.873 In fact, RC7 was a reversedquestion and therefore was eliminated for further analysis

There was a particular case of cooperation (COO), which indicated the Cronback’scoefficient alpha value of 0.655 The acceptable values would depend on the nature

of a study and academic discipline In social science, sociology or exploratorystudies, the modest reliabilities of 0.60 are also acceptable (Nunnally, 1967; Aron &Aron, 1999; Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2006; Zikmund, Babin, Carr,

& Griffin, 2013); therefore, it was reasonable to accept the scale of COO with the Cronback’s coefficient alpha value of 0.655