Configuring effective client-adviser interactions

A critical mechanism to achieve interorganizational trust is the development of trust at the interpersonal level, when representatives of partner organizations interact. The purpose of this study is to further illuminate the conditions under which interpersonal trust develops in organizational settings. Drawing on data from a survey of clients of different financial services providers, this study performs a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to better understand and describe interpersonal trust-enhancing mechanisms. This inquiry focuses on factors of three important domains: communication style, interactant stereotypes, and interaction structure. The results of the analysis offer insights into the necessary and sufficient conditions for trust, thus advancing current debates by uncovering important hygiene factors of trust and delineating interesting complementarity effects among factors of three different domains.