Trust(categorised as ‘willingness’) in long-term relationships can overcome a lot of the difficulties in relationships in the supply chain, such as abuse of power, conflicts and low profitability (Sullivan and Peterson 1982). Trust can reduce
perceived relational risk (Das and Teng 2000) and help maintain the stability of the supply chain in the long term
(Handfield and Bechtel 2002, Chen and Paulraj 2004).
which considered
the management of risk involved in buyer–supplier relationship through collaborative learning, while the
strategy suggested by Kraljic with regard to handling supply risk focuses on diversity, which means changing
suppliers. The evolution in Kraljic’s approach towards including involvement-related aspects can be seen in
multiple publications; for instance, the interdependency between buyer and supplier suggested by Bensaou
(1999), partnership by Kaufman et al. (2000) and van Weele (2000) and supplier’s commitment as one
dimension of the segmentation by Svensson (2004).