What Trust Matters When

Abstract

While trusting coworker relationships are conducive to knowledge transfer, distinct types of trust and the contextual conditions under which they are most effective have received limited empirical attention. In this article, we distinguish between professional and personal trust, and hypothesize that their relative knowledge transfer advantage may vary as a function of the duration of the receiver-source relationship. Using survey data from 135 knowledge receivers reporting on their relationships with their knowledge sources, we find that both professional and personal trust interact with relationship duration, albeit in opposite directions. We also find a synergistic effect of the two types of trust on knowledge transfer but only in long duration relationships. The implications of distinguishing professional and personal trust within the overall nomological network of trust are discussed in terms of theory and practice development.