Trust and distrust are two distinct organizing principles that play a critical role in interorganizational projects where highly interdependent organizations collaborate to build tailor-made and technologically-complex solutions. Whereas an emerging body of research has debated the conceptual distinction between trust and distrust, this paper emphasizes the processual nature of trusting and distrusting and the interplay between them. Drawing upon insights from project-based collaboration in a complex products and systems (CoPS) industry, we explore the distinct cognitive and behavioral mechanisms through which trust and distrust work, and orient firms towards optimism and watchfulness in the interaction. Our findings show that trust and distrust can act both as substitutes and complements through three interconnected dynamics—undermining, enabling and compensating. These dynamics develop and recursively interrelate through interfirm interactions within single projects and in the broader network. We conclude by presenting our contributions to interorganizational trust literature and by proposing that the interplay of trust and distrust can have both positive and negative effects on the pursuit of project-based relationships.

信任和不信任是两种截然不同的组织原则，它们在组织间项目中发挥着关键作用，在这些项目中，高度相互依赖的组织合作构建量身定制的技术复杂的解决方案。新兴的研究机构对信任和不信任之间的概念区别进行了辩论，本文强调了信任和不信任的过程性质以及它们之间的相互作用。借鉴复杂产品和系统 (CoPS) 行业中基于项目的协作的见解，我们探索了信任和不信任起作用的独特认知和行为机制，并使公司在互动中朝着乐观和警惕的方向发展。我们的研究结果表明，信任和不信任可以通过三个相互关联的动态——破坏、使能和补偿。这些动态通过单个项目和更广泛的网络中的企业间相互作用而发展并递归地相互关联。最后，我们展示了我们对组织间信任文献的贡献，并提出信任和不信任的相互作用会对基于项目的关系的追求产生积极和消极的影响。