Trust (in)congruence, open innovation, and circular economy performance: Polynomial regression and response surface analyses

Engaging partner firms in open innovation is critical to overcoming internal resource/capability constraints to achieve firm and supply chain circular economy (CE) performance, yet scholars have not examined this link empirically. Further, while researchers have repeatedly emphasized trust as a key driver of open innovation performance, little is known from a dyadic trust perspective (e.g., congruence vs. incongruence, high–high congruence vs. low–low congruence). To fill these gaps, we propose a theoretical model based on the social exchange theory (SET) and test it using a dyadic dataset of listed Chinese manufacturing firms. The results suggest that 1) rather than unilateral trust from the focal firm or its partners, trust congruence is more predictive of successful open process and product innovations, 2) regarding congruence types (low–low vs. high–high), congruence at higher levels of trust facilitates open product innovation more than low–low trust congruence; interestingly, such an effect is not significant for open process innovation, 3) open process innovation has a positive influence on the focal firm's CE performance, but its impact on supply chain CE performance is not statistically significant, and 4) open product innovation has a significantly positive impact on the focal firm and supply chain CE performance. Our findings still hold after analyzing time-lagged models and alternative measurements as robustness checks. Our study provides meaningful theoretical contributions to the literature and useful, practical insights for managing inter-organizational relationships, open innovation, and CE performance.