Research Note—Trust Is in the Eye of the Beholder: A Vignette Study of Postevent Behavioral Controls' Effects on Individual Trust in Virtual Teams

Abstract

R esearch in face-to-face teams shows conflicting results about the impact of behavioral controls on trust; some research shows that controls increase the salience of good behavior, which increases trust while other research shows that controls increase the salience of poor behavior that decreases trust. The only study in virtual teams, which examined poorly functioning teams, found that controls increased the salience of poor behavior, which decreased trust. We argue that in virtual teams behavioral controls amplify the salience of all behaviors (positive and negative) and that an individual's selective perception bias influences how these behaviors are interpreted. Thus the link from behavioral controls to trust is more complex than first thought. We conducted a 2 × 2 experiment, varying the use of behavioral controls (controls, no controls) and individual team member behaviors (reneging behaviors designed to reduce trust beliefs and fulfilling behaviors designed to increase trust beliefs). We found that behavioral controls did amplify the salience of all behaviors; however, contrary to what we expected, this actually weakened the impact of reneging and fulfilling behaviors on trust. We believe that completing a formal evaluation increased empathy and the awareness of context in which the behaviors occurred and thus mitigated extreme perceptions. We also found that behavioral controls increased the selective perception bias which induced participants to see the behaviors their disposition to trust expected rather than the behaviors that actually occurred.

Factors Affecting Perceptions of Privacy Breach among Smartphone Application Users

“…Vignettes provide a common frame of reference or situation to compare perceptions. Vignette-based studies are valid and reliable, and reach the same conclusions as nonvignette studies [8].…”

“…These are short descriptions of hypothetical situations or events, which are widely used in the study of perceptions, attitudes or beliefs [8]. Vignettes provide a common frame of reference or situation to compare perceptions.…”

Healthy Divide or Detrimental Division? Subgroups in Virtual Teams

“…Teams have become a favorite vehicle for addressing complex problems at many institutions in part because complex problems require multiple perspectives and a diverse knowledge base that one individual rarely possesses [2,18,30,31,45,49]. Now technology allows organizations to virtually assemble physically dispersed expertise in ways previously unavailable [10,46]. Despite the advantages of these virtual teams, they can present new challenges [13,43].…”

Effective? Ethical? Behavior Control & Algorithmic Management in Virtual Environments

“…These tools also have potential to drastically decrease trust in team environments, for instance, internal monitoring by increasing the salience of accidents [15]. The gap of trust between those who tend to deem others as trustworthy and those who do not is widened by behavior control mechanisms [16]. Whether or not awareness systems help or hurt trust depends on who does the monitoring, as well as the type of trust [17].…”

“…When they could be more productive in their own way. For instance, virtual platforms that pay by the hour can place high productivity workers at a disadvantage, as they get tasks done quicker [16]. However, if the reward structure supports different types of workers, productivity can be more accurately rewarded.…”