Trust in virtual teams: towards an integrative model of trust formation

Abstract

Traditional models of trust have seen trust as being created as a result of a long history of interaction, but recent studies of trust in virtual teams have shown the existence of high initial trust among team members. This paper proposes an integrated model of trust that encompasses both the traditional view of trust and the swift trust found in virtual teams. Based on the dual process theories of cognition, we argue that individuals form trust attitudes via three distinct routes at different stages of a relationship: the peripheral route, the central route, and the habitual route, irrespective. In the initial stages of a relationship when individuals lack information about each other, they rely on peripheral cues (e.g., third party information, social categories, roles, and rules) to form trust. Once individuals have shared history and knowledge of the other party, they use the central route, which involves the assessment of the other party's ability, integrity, and benevolence. Finally, after long periods of shared history in which the individuals develop a habitual pattern of trust, along with possible emotional bonds, they are no longer motivated to deliberately assess trust, and instead simply enact prior trust attitudes via the habitual route. The mediated communication environment predominantly used by virtual teams slows down the progression among the three routes, and increases perceived risk.

Supporting initial trust in distributed idea generation and idea evaluation

“…One way to support distributed team members with the formation of trustworthiness is to provide opportunities for accumulating personal knowledge and task-relevant background information [21,26]. Feng claimed that, "developing artifacts to help people to identify others who are similar to themselves or who have similar experiences may be helpful for promoting empathic attitudes that build interpersonal trust" [14].…”

“…According to multidimensional trust research, two dimensions of trust have been identified as important to organizations: cognitive trust and affective trust [30]. Specifically, "cognition-based trust results from deliberate assessment of each other's characteristics and the process of weighting benefits of trusting over risks, whereas affect-based trust involves one's emotional bonds and sincere concern for the well-being of the others" [21].…”

Strengthening Social Ties via ICT in the Organization

“…Previous research covers, for example, the meaning of social ties in virtual collaboration, transferring knowledge, or building social capital [6,9,12]. Moreover, the building of personal relationships via ICT has been broadly examinedfor example, in forming trust [24,25] -but there is an absence of research on actual social tie strengthening via ICT. Trust has an essential role in tie-strengthening, but it is only one of the many tiestrength components [13,14].…”

Recognizing situations that demand trust

“…Trust measures have been derived from information withholding (deceit) [21], agent reliability [22,23], agent opinion based on deceitful actions [16], compliance with virtual social norms [24], and compliance with an a priori set of trusted behaviors from a case study [25]. Models of trust range from beta probability distributions over agent reliability [16], to knowledge-based formulas for trust [25], to perception-specific process models for trust [24].…”