Acquiring local knowledge from host-country key partners is crucial for internationalizing firms, yet it entails severe risks for both partners. Research thus emphasizes the role of interorganizational trust, but is inconclusive about how effective it is in different contexts. We theorize how different trust dimensions interact with host-country legal safeguards. We test our hypotheses with data on 210 cross-border relationships in the renewable-energy industry. Results show that weak legal safeguards render ability-based trust particularly effective for knowledge acquisition, while strong legal safeguards render integrity-based trust effective. Benevolence-based trust, however, may have detrimental effects under conditions of strong legal safeguards.

从东道国的主要合作伙伴那里获取本地知识对于公司的国际化至关重要，但它给合作伙伴双方都带来了严重的风险。因此，研究强调了组织间信任的作用，但对于它在不同情况下的有效性尚无定论。我们对不同的信任维度如何与东道国的法律保障相互作用进行了理论化。我们使用 210 个可再生能源行业跨境关系的数据来检验我们的假设。结果表明，薄弱的法律保障使基于能力的信任对知识获取特别有效，而强大的法律保障使基于诚信的信任有效。然而，基于善意的信任在强大的法律保障条件下可能会产生不利影响。