Meccanismi di controllo e fiducia tra sostituzione e complementarietà nelle alleanze strategiche internazionali

The aim of this article is to deepen the understanding of the complexity of trust-control relationship in international alliances, testing whether trust and control operate as complements or as substitutes. We focus on the impact of control mechanisms – output control, process control, and social control – on trust. We also analyze the impact of trust on alliance performance. We test the research hypotheses on a sample of 142 international strategic alliances. Our findings show that control’s effects on trust can change depending of the kind of control mechanisms considered, filling a theoretical gap. Consistent with the notion of complementary effect, we find that output control and social control have a positive impact on trust level, while process control negatively impacts on trust, in line with substitutive effect theories. Finally, we verify that trust has a positive effect on alliance performance.