Trust plays a significant role for business success of international companies in China. Without trustful relationship the international companies can’t recruit and retain qualified local managers, who play an essential role for successfulimplementation of strategical and operational business practices. Trust building is a complicated issue. It could cover many factors. This Study concentrates on figuring out how the difference of national culture, the centralization degree of headquarter and the hierarchy level of staff localization influence trust building in international companies in China. This study has chosen these three influencing factors of trust mainly because their international context, the high relevance and the personal experience of the researcher. This research contains both theoretical and empirical studies. In the theoretical study it has been argued that communication, cooperation and commitment are the indicators of trust. As trust is a soft factor which is very difficult to measure, we can indirectly measure the relation between trust and its influencing factors (difference of national culture, the centralization degree of headquarter and the hierarchy level of staff localization) through measuring the relation between the indicators of trust (communication, cooperation and commitment) and the influencing factors. The empirical study is undertaken through an online survey. A questionnaire will be designed in both English and Chinese language. The probands are local staff of middle management level in subsidiaries of international companies, who play a significant role for the success of the strategical and operational implementation in the company. With the help of the computer assisted data analysis software SPSS it can be proved that: • There is a negative relation between trust and difference of national cultures. The bigger the difference of national culture is, the more difficult it is for international companies to build up trust in the local companies in China. • There is a negative relation between trust and centralization degree of headquarter. The higher the centralization degree of headquarter, the lower the trust in local company in China is. • There is a positive relation between trust and hierarchy level of staff localization. The higher the hierarchy level of staff localization, the higher the trust in international companies in China is.
By means of the results of the empirical research the methods and measures of building trust of local staff in international companies in China have been inferred in this study.