Research On The Trust In Virtual Teams Of Enterprises

Nowadays more and more enterprises adopt virtual teams as their organizational forms.Virtual Team consists of members who are separated in space, time and organization. Itsmembers collaborate closely depending on the telecommunications technology. Virtual team is amain form of virtual administration of human resource. Trust in virtual team is regarded as thecore element influencing the efficient operation of the team. International researchers havestudied it since late 90's of 20 century. The paper studied the existing virtual teams in companiesin order to establish an analytic framework in this area. Our aim is to discuss the role of trust andthe antecedents of trust in virtual teams. We also examined the formation of trust through thecommunication channel in virtual teams. In the last part of paper the strategy on trustmanagement was proposed to enhance the trust in virtual teams. Firstly, the paper analyses in depth the key role of trust in virtual teams in boththeoretical and empirically perspectives. We discuss the driving forces of virtual teamscoming from technology, economy, manpower and organizational structure, and divide thevirtual teams into different categories. We also compared the virtual team with traditionalteam and summarize its features and challenges. In the analysis of the key role of trust wedemonstrate that the trust playing the fundamental role in virtual teams depending ontheoretical and empirically bases. We find the level of trust in virtual teams has significantimpact on team performance, task performance and peripheral performance of virtualteams. Secondly, the paper suggests that the antecedents of trust formation in virtual teamsconsist of the characteristics of team members, the structural characteristics of teams andinstitution as well as culture. In regard to the influence of the characteristics of teammembers on the trust in virtual teams, we discuss the relation between the characteristics ofteam members (their propensity to trust, and perceived ability, benevolence, integrity ofother members) and the level of trust in virtual teams. We find the characteristics of teammembers are significantly related to the level of trust in virtual teams. Especially remotemember's propensity to trust and perceived ability are positively correlated with the level oftrust in virtual teams. In regard to the influence of the structural characteristics of teams on the trust in IIIvirtual teams, we design the degree of virtual-ness as a representative index of structuralcharacteristics of teams, and then establish the model for measurement with four maindimensions. We find the degree of virtual-ness is negatively correlated with the level oftrust in virtual teams. Among the four dimensions of degrees of virtual-ness, theorganizational dispersion and communicational dispersion have more significant impact onthe level of trust in virtual teams. As regards the influence of institution and culture on the trust in virtual teams, weanalyses the impact of institution outside and inside the virtual teams on the trust. Then weput forward that the cultural differences of team members may cause transcultural conflicts,and will result in low level of trust in virtual teams. Thirdly, the paper examined the communication channel in virtual teams. Based oncommunication theory and our finding in our empirical study, we elaborate the exploratorymodel of the trust communication in virtual teams. In 24 investigated virtual teams, thefrequency of team members communicate is found positively correlated with the level oftrust in virtual teams. At the same time the five frequently used computer-mediatedcommunication media and traditional face-to-face meetings are analyzed with regard totheir relationship with the level of trust in virtual teams. The result shows that the mediawith high richness can play more positive roles to increase the trust in virtual teams.