Trust as the antidote to Brexit and COVID-19: explaining how Danish SMEs' confidence in the future of their British partnerships associates with trust

Poul Erik Flyvholm Jørgensen, N. Leila Trapp, Gert Svendsen and Line Skov Nielsen

International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business, 2024, vol. 14, issue 1, 62-85

Abstract: Trust is key to successful trading relationships and is believed to be essential in maintaining confidence in their future, particularly if exposed to game-changing events. Thus, this study examines how 193 Danish small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) trust levels and their perceptions of how this trust is composed correlate with their confidence in the future of trading with their British business partners in the context of Brexit and COVID-19 towards the end of the so-called "transition period". The survey shows that when Danish CEOs have high levels of trust in their business partner, they also have strong confidence that a valued business relationship will survive exposure to disruptive exogenous events. The survey also shows that the trust dimensions recognised as either expertness, truthfulness, or attentiveness in a business partner are almost equally valued and correlate equally with the respondents' confidence in the future.

Keywords: inter-organisational trust; confidence; uncertainty; credibility; SMEs; small and medium-sized enterprises; relationship maintenance; Brexit; COVID-19. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=138680 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijgsbu:v:14:y:2024:i:1:p:62-85

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().