The Trust Relationship In Virtual Research And Development Organization

The virtual research and development (R&D) organization is the trends of international R&D organization in the21st century, because it could optimize the combination of resources and respond flexibly to market. However, it developed slowly in China because of the lack of trust. We should explore the specialty of trust relationship and seek the way to establish the trust relationship in virtual R&D organization.This paper determinates to study the trust relationship that between the partners who cut across their original organizational boundaries and cooperate with the R&D personnel from other organizations. And because of the importance of trust-building in the development of virtual R&D organization, this paper takes the establishment of trust relationships as the core issue. This paper makes an analysis of the rapid establishment of trust relationship, the equality between trustees and belongingness of technology in virtual R&D organization. In virtual R&D organization, the members trust their partners because they preset high ability, integrity and benevolence of their partners. There are mainly task-focused trust, credit trust, and relational trust mechanism in virtual R&D organization. Based on the need to complete tasks, trust in the partnership is determined in accordance with the cognition of its role and skills; based on the confidence in fiduciary, trust in the partnership is determined in accordance with the cognition of its contract and good reputation, and trust in the partnership is determined in accordance with the cognitive and emotional factors caused by the existing guanxi, communication and interactive relationships. In the study, antecedent variables "roles cognition" and "skills cognition" reflect the task mechanism, the "credit evaluation" reflects the credit mechanism, and the "existing relationship","communication relations","interactive relationship" reflect the relational mechanism. These variables produce the scale about trust dimensions and antecedents of trust relationships. After the surveys and statistical analysis, datas confirmed the "roles cognition","skills cognition","credit evaluation", and "interactive relationship" have positive influence on the formation of trust relationship. And there are clear causal relationship between these variables and the trust relationship.On the basis of the above study, the paper discussed some influencing factors which would promote the establishment of trust relationships in virtual R&D organization by use of theories of management ethics and organizational behavior. That is, changing the managers’ and organizational members’ role cognition and improving their sense of responsibility enables them to better fulfill the task; constructing a system as complete as possible and stressing the belief of trustworthy reassures the organizational members; Strengthenning managers’ interpersonal orientation and facilitating members’ interpersonal communication make the member each other feels warm. Managers should uphold the concept of "people are purposes" and "ethical management". Also, it can not be ignored that performance and high-risk impact on the trust relationships in virtual R&D organization.