The Impact of Social Trust on Strategic Performance in Manufacturing Companies in Sanandaj: The Mediating Role of Innovation

The current descriptive study aimed to explore the impact of social trust on strategic performance in manufacturing companies in Sanandaj with a focus on the mediating role of innovation using the Structural Equation Modeling. The random sample of 111 comprising three groups of CEO, production managers and marketing and sales managers were selected from the population of the staff working at all manufacturing companies in Sandandaj with at least three years of active production experience. The research data were collected through administering three standardized questionnaires including the Innovation Questionnaire, Social Trust, and Strategic Performance Questionnaires, each with respective reliability estimates of 0.79, 0.81 and 0.77. The results obtained from the Structural Equation Modeling revealed a significant relationship between innovation and social trust. Also, the findings indicated that social trust had significant and positive impact of on strategic performance through innovation. That is, trust and innovations are among prerequisite conditions of strategic performance whose increase will bring about a subsequence growth in strategic performance.