Trust-aware process design: the case of GoFood

Trust is an increasingly important requirement for any business and as a result has become a contemporary design criterion for business processes. However, the literature to date is very much focused on the technical (security) aspects, which are provider centric, as opposed to trust that is customer centric. In this paper, the authors extended an initial meta-model of trust-aware process design by proposing a way to capture trust-intensity for four trust dimensions, i.e. input, people, process and output and an organizational trust position. The authors also investigate the deployment of the extended meta-model in practice.

An extensive literature study is conducted to derive an understanding of the dimension's customer trust when interacting with an organization. Based on the findings of the literature review and a previously developed trust meta-model, the authors propose a way to describe an organizational trust position, i.e. the depiction of how much uncertainty is prevalent in the trust dimensions. Next, the authors conducted an exploratory case study using secondary data to validate the extended meta-model.

The case study demonstrated the applicability of the extended trust meta-model and derived actionable practices. In this case, the Indonesian food delivery company GoFood, the authors identified trust concerns in the input, process, resources and output of their business at the start of their operations. Since then, GoFood took specific actions to reduce their operational, behavioral and perceived uncertainty and these identified trust concerns. To a lesser degree, GoFood has managed vulnerability issues and invested in measures to increase customers' confidence. As a result of reduced uncertainties, GoFood's business has grown and became the number one in food service delivery in Indonesia.

The approach to capture trust (in the trust dimensions) is still a simplified version and a pre-step for a fully developed management tool or method. The use of a secondary data from a single case study also limits the validity and generalizability of the findings.

The extended meta-model proposed in this paper has several implications related to the organization's BPM capabilities. The result also demonstrates how trust measures related to reducing uncertainty, reducing vulnerability and increasing confidence can be applied in practice. Strategies used by the case company presented here such as rating systems to increase confidence can be used by other firms within a similar context.

Having an empirically validated framework for the management of trust, allows organizations to execute an operational model for the development of trusted engagement with the main benefactor being the customer.

Previous trust-related studies focused on conceptual ideas only, relied on fictive examples or were very much focused on the technical (security) aspects of business processes. This study is the first empirical validation of a trust meta-model that serves managers to understand their trust position and to guide trust-building actions.