The Role of Trust as Mediator between Contract, Information and Knowledge within Business Incubators

Benjamin Vedel (1) , Ines Gabarret (2)

1 LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221
2 EDC Paris

The relationship between the incubator team and the tenants is very important to the success of the incubation process. A good relationship is based on cooperation and both parties need to be committed (Rice, 2002). From a monitoring point of view, incubator managers can use two mechanisms to build good relationships with their tenants: the contract and trust. We analysed 177 incubated firms using multiple regression analysis and a structural equation methodology. Our results show that trust acts as a mediator between the contract and both information disclosure and knowledge acquisition.

Mots clés: Business incubation; trust; information disclosure; contract specificity; knowledge; mediation; multiple regression analysis; structural equation methodology

Domaines: Gestion et management

Benjamin Vedel, Ines Gabarret. The Role of Trust as Mediator between Contract, Information and Knowledge within Business Incubators. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2014, 23 (4). ⟨hal-01886222⟩