Paul Vlaar contends that strategic alliances and other forms of cooperation, such as buyer-supplier relationships, joint ventures and offshoring initiatives, increasingly stand at the basis of competitive advantage. Although contracts and trust play a crucial role in such relationships, prior...

Reputation-based trust, reflecting the time-dependency of trust, influences inter-firm alliances. A literature review resulted in hypotheses which were tested in an empirical study based on a quantitative analysis and in-depth interviews with firms in the bio tech sector of human health in the...