Publicly-funded programmes of business support are important vehicles for rural development, and over the last two decades, group-based models of business support have become popular, in which dedicated advisors work with small firms in groups, rather than one-to-one mentoring. A fundamental goal of such programmes is to foster enhanced inter-firm knowledge exchange and learning, and improved firm resilience and innovation, through the development of collective trust amongst participants,. Although many studies have investigated the evolution of trust, including in a rural context, to date most research has focused either on the macro-institutional level, or the micro-personal level, with relatively little exploration of how meso-level collective trust may be encouraged amongst groups of participants in rural business support programmes. This paper addresses the gap by exploring the development of collective trust within two group-based rural business support programmes in Northern Ireland. The study reveals that programme design features and the interpersonal style of advisors combined to shape clients' trust in the programmes and their sponsoring institutions, as well as influencing the degrees of goodwill and camaraderie within the client groups themselves.

公共资助的商业支持计划是农村发展的重要工具，在过去的二十年中，基于团体的商业支持模式变得流行，其中专门的顾问与小公司合作，而不是一对一指导。此类计划的一个基本目标是通过发展参与者之间的集体信任，促进公司间知识交流和学习的加强，并提高公司的应变能力和创新能力。尽管许多研究调查了信任的演变，包括在农村背景下，但迄今为止，大多数研究要么集中在宏观制度层面，要么集中在微观个人层面，对中观层面的集体信任如何形成的探索相对较少。鼓励农村商业支持计划的参与者群体。本文通过探讨北爱尔兰两个以团体为基础的农村商业支持计划中集体信任的发展来解决这一差距。研究表明，项目设计特点和顾问的人际交往风格共同塑造了客户对项目及其赞助机构的信任，并影响了客户群体本身的善意和友情程度。