Abstract
Network entrepreneurs broker relationships as opportunity exploitation.
These entrepreneurs rely on mechanisms for building trust. Although
entrepreneurship scholars have learned a great deal about trust, much of
that work is bounded in contexts that provide important tailwinds for
the willingness to be vulnerable. In contrast, we conducted a
qualitative study of trust (and trust repair) by network entrepreneurs
in a gray market—a context between the poles of
legal/legitimate/appropriate and illegal/illegitimate/inappropriate. Our
theorizing uncovered network, heuristic, trustworthiness, and control
sources of trust (and trust-repair efforts) that sometimes differ from
dynamics seen in traditional and criminal ventures.