Abstract

There is academic consensus that trust facilitates economic cooperation since it helps to mobilize resources, acts as a mechanism to cope with uncertainty, diminishes transaction costs and reduces system complexity. In cross-cultural management, trust has been acknowledged as a facilitator of economic relations. Nevertheless, its nature, definition and sources are still debated from antagonistic and sometimes exclusive perspectives. Additionally, trust research has been pointed out as acontextual, which limits trust understanding across the cultures that interact in a global economy. This article attempts to enrich this debate by analysing the sources of trust within a cross-cultural case study: the Sino-Chilean economic exchange. Using a qualitative methodology, and based on empirical research, the article examines the contextual setting in which the Sino-Chilean relationship is embedded and proposes sinicization as an alternative source for trust, understood here as a rationally driven, restricted form of cultural adaptation adopted by the weakest party in the relationship, which is able to embrace different perspectives on trust building.