Building trust in cross-cultural relationships

For some years, Haaga-Helia has been offering an Aviation Business BBA degree program in collaboration with Chongqing University of Science and Technology (CQUST). The collaboration agreement was signed in 2018, and teaching began in 2020 when COVID-19 prevented on-site teaching. After travel restrictions were lifted in 2023, teachers were able to teach on site for the first time. Prior to the signing of the collaboration agreement, representatives of Haaga-Helia commercial services had visited Chongqing, and a few CQUST teachers and administrators had made a return visit to Haaga-Helia’s Porvoo Campus to learn about the teaching methods used at Haaga-Helia.

In this article, I review the collaboration and its development from an administrative perspective. The concepts of trust and cultural intelligence are central to this approach.

Trust and cultural intelligence

Trust requires a mutual relationship in which shared expectations, commitments, and actions play an important role. Since trust is created through human interaction and communication, it will be earned or acquired through one’s own behaviour. (Harisalo & Miettinen 2010.)

Different aspects of trust can be identified (Harisalo & Miettinen 2010).

• The first aspect is seeing trust as a behavioural and characteristic feature in which commitment, knowing each other, responsible and consistency in one’s behaviour, open communication and an ability to reconcile and resolve tensions and contradictions builds trust significantly.
• The second aspect is to see the building, maintaining and strengthening of the trust as a process.
• The third aspect is to examine the trust as protection against mutual vulnerability. In organizations, and especially in the cooperation between the organizations, matters are not entirely in the hands of individuals; everyone needs the help, support, and goodwill of others.

Trust is created and strengthened when no one exploits the vulnerability of others for their own benefit. Trust can be defined as human capital which motivates to develop the work and helps facing the uprising difficulties with confidence. (Harisalo & Miettinen 2010.)

Cultural intelligence (CQ) is defined as the ability to understand and adapt to unfamiliar and culturally diverse contexts. It consists of three components: cognitive (head), physical (body), and emotional/motivational (heart). Although cultural intelligence shares many characteristics with emotional intelligence, it goes a leap beyond in its ability to distinguish behavioural patterns produced by a particular culture from the behavioural patterns of individuals or those occurring in the humankind in general. (Earley & Mosakowski 2004.)

The process of building trust

The process of building trust can be seen as a three-phase process (Harisalo & Miettinen 2010).

1. Calculus-based or contractual trust
   People are just learning to know each other, their character and behaviour. They might feel uncertain, and their trust is relaying strongly on situational evaluation.
2. Knowledge-based or communication trust
   People already know each other and have learned to trust the predictability of other’s behaviour and actions. The communication, its regularity and positive attitude, and constructive feedback, as well as the understanding when the information is to be shared or kept confidential, facilitate the achievement of this stage.
3. Identification-based or competence trust
   The trust turns into convergence of goals and efforts. People are ready to help each other, to use their professional competence, and even willing to make sacrifices to achieve common goals. We tend to trust those who are skilled and keep things rolling.

In our cooperation with CQUST the first phase of trust began with the negotiation and signing of collaboration agreement, thus being clearly calculus-based or contractual trust. However, this happened on the institutional level and amongst those in the highest level of the organisations. For those who work on the administrative and operational level this phase started later when they started to turn the signed agreement into practice. This phase included a lot of uncertainties like the changes in the curriculum, practices not specified in the agreement, administrative and ICT discrepancies, not to mention the impact of travel restrictions caused by COVID-19 and thus the changes in the teaching arrangements and the scheduling practices.

Often challenges in cross-cultural education collaboration are due to different communication styles and barriers, decision-making processes, and institutional policies. (e.g. Yao et. al 2025). These have also included the cultural differences. In Finland the decision-making process is usually quite horizontal, in China more vertical. The language and a lack of understanding institutional policies and cultural nuances have also caused some challenges.

In summary, it can be said that there has been cultural, system and operational differences. The process has required from all parties open-mindedness, flexibility and ability to create new solutions. Resolving different kinds of administrative discrepancies and understanding cultural factors have taken various discussions and time, but, at the same time, have built trust and moved the relationship into the knowledge-based or communication trust.

There are also some indications of identification-based or competence trust: having a common goal to smoothen the processes for both students and staff, and getting students to graduate in time, overcoming administrative challenges, considering new approaches and ways to increase students’ cooperation between Haaga-Helia and CQUST via a joint intensive week. These mean a willingness of flexibility and adaptability in the processes and working methods of both parties believing in mutual benefits.

Building cultural intelligence

Against the reflection of the three components of cultural intelligence defined by Earley and Mosakowski (2004), it seems that we reached only the cognitive level prior to visiting CQUST on site. We possessed a general knowledge of Asian culture and we were aware of the cultural differences such as the avoidance of direct confrontation and appreciation of harmony in Chinese management style. We knew that Chinese culture is hierarchical, emphasizing personal relationships, mutual respect, trust and group consensus. (see e.g. Pheng & Leong 2000, Rodríguez-Rivero et al. 2020). However, via remote meetings and email communication these are more difficult to achieve and demand more time to develop. Especially, non-verbal communication and its signs are almost impossible to interpret remotely.

Rodríguez-Rivero et al. (2020) mention the various risks on the projects with Chinese due to lack of cultural intelligence, such as communication (misunderstanding indirect styles, imprecise information), different time-orientation (short-term vs. long-term, Chinese being more long-term), individualism vs. collectivism, missing common bonds, not respecting traditions or not understanding the significance of family ties and commitments. Some of these risks are avoided when possessing deeper and more holistic understanding of the culture; gaining also two other elements of the cultural intelligence: the physical (body), and emotional/motivational (heart).

Haaga-Helia instructors have now been teaching on-site twice a year, each teacher staying at CQUST from one week to three weeks per semester. Even though the on-site teaching sessions are intensive and travelling between the continents is exhausting, teachers unanimously agree that the learning outcomes are better than in online teaching.

We have come to the same conclusion on the administrative side as well. Spring 2025 was the first time that Haaga-Helian administrative staff had the opportunity to travel to CQUST. Earlier we had met the CQUST staff in our Steering Committee meetings organized online. However, having a meeting with camera connection to the conference room at CQUST has not enabled the creation of personal relationships and the formation of cultural understanding. After visiting CQUST and having the staff meetings face to face, we have better understanding of the administrative staff, their work positions and tasks as well as the entire environment, both physical and emotional.

We also strengthened this connection during our visit in autumn 2025. Now, having met the CQUST staff twice face to face we have increased significantly our mutual understanding and have been able to discuss effectively and with confidence seeking solutions to some of the current issues.

The physical experience, being present on the CQUST campus and seeing everyday campus life helped us to understand the reality and practical things, like the walking distances from the dormitories to the classroom, or the lunch rush hours. This bodily sensation seemed to be also a game-changer for the teachers as well. In fact, it inspired one of the instructors to start her Ph.D. thesis on the subject. The physical experience also increased the understanding of the cultural nuances and the emotional involvement in the collaboration, thus building trust.

In turn, this more holistic view helps us to support our instructors and the Chinese students and create better solutions to the practical matters.

Towards better cultural and organizational expertise

Reflecting on the collaboration between Haaga-Helia and CQUST there are several lessons learned. First, you need to start to build trust right from the initial stages by encouraging both parties to visit each other. This enables the creation of personal relationships and development of the cultural intelligence which smoothens the collaboration and mutual understanding. The process of building trust takes time, so the earlier it is started, the faster results are seen.

Secondly, from the point of view of project management, it is a worthwhile endeavour to create a shared annual timetable to help visualize the administrative schedules, restrictions and deadlines of both parties in order to coordinate them and find the common schedules. Already operating in different time zones can make collaboration challenging, especially when it comes to scheduling teaching and organizing meetings.

Thirdly, other matters to be discussed in the early stages of the collaboration are the various institutional policies concerning, for example, graduation, course completion criteria and grading. Also, identifying and anticipating the challenges of different ICT-systems facilitate the cooperation and remove obstacles well in advance. It would be beneficial if ICT-specialists visited the site and gained an understanding of system capabilities and limitations.

It is important to identify the core actors of process phases and give those a possibility to create the personal relationships and build trust among them. This is crucial especially in China where the hierarchy is higher than in Finland and it is customary that people of the same level are in contact in each other.

All in all, the collaboration between Haaga-Helia and CQUST has been a learning experience for both parties, and we are now more prepared for future cross-cultural projects and collaborations in China or elsewhere. Finally, we have improved our competitiveness in international arenas and broadened our perspectives which may lead to more innovative solutions in our own organization as well.

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