Trust and IT innovation in asymmetric environments of the supply chain management process

This paper examines the effect of trust and IT innovations on organizational performance under asymmetric conditions in the context of collaborative agreements in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) process. Our research effort is timely and novel as it focuses on the current transition, on the part of SCM organizations, to a more electronically integrated environment. IT innovations, in this respect, hold a promise to enhance quality of inter-organizational information exchange and to make supply chains more transparent. The results of our study indicate that the interaction between trust and innovation varies in different markets. Having studied behaviors of companies in asymmetric environments of the SCM process in mature and emerging markets, we found that a higher level of maturity is more conducive for IT innovations despite the effect of asymmetries. Our findings also indicate that organizational performance suffers due to a slow pace of adoption of IT innovations designed to electronically integrate disparate organizational IT systems. Yet, we have observed that higher levels of trust do not necessarily lead to a significant increase in IT innovations in emerging markets. Also, trust has no effect on equilibrium of collaborative relationships in the context of asymmetric environments in emerging markets. Finally, we have found that power asymmetry exhibits negative influences on IT innovations for both economy types.