Interaction technology: Speech act based information technology support for building collaborative relationships and trust

While relationships and trust are now commonly accepted as central to conducting business both within and across organizations, literature provides only minimal guidance as to how relationships and trust in inter and intra-organizations are created. Moreover, the role that information technology could play in building trust has largely been ignored. This paper describes an Internet-based process for building trust between collaborative commerce partners. Integrating concepts from Winograd and Flores' concept of speech act theory based ‘conversations for action’ with research on ‘closed loop cycles’ of trust and relationships in the disciplines of management and marketing, the paper first develops a framework for understanding trust and trust-building processes. The framework characterizes the process of building of trust as the management of commitments inherent in speech acts between requesters (customers) and performers. Furthermore, joint sense making during the conversation for action contributes to greater transparency thereby also increasing the levels of mutual trust. The process framework is used to develop requirements for information technology support for a process and tool for building trust. The paper then goes on to describe an implementation of the conversations for action and the closed loop cycles through a web-based software tool based upon Winograd and Flores' work. Experiences with managing commitments and closing the loop are presented through a case study in an organization that develops and maintains menu-driven voice applications for the call center industry. The case study shows the inadequacy of traditional communication technologies in managing complex, geographically distributed collaborative commitments, and shows how the use of the software tool contributes to a greater level of satisfaction and closing of the performance loop. The paper ends with a reflection on the nature of the tool, its possible uses and misuses, and the role of human wisdom in its use.