A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Trust Building and Maintenance in Virtual Organizations

The issue of trust development in traditional organizations has been widely discussed in the academic literature for several years. Recently, scholars have also studied trust development in temporary groups and have noted some fundamental differences between the manner in which trust develops in traditional organizations and the manner in which it develops in temporary groups. Virtual organizations are a new type of organization characterized by traits of both traditional organizations and temporary groups. This paper integrates the literature on trust in virtual organizations and the perspectives of trust development in both traditional organizations and temporary groups to develop a process-based framework which facilitates the understanding of trust development in the virtual organization setting

A Web of Connections: The Role of Social Capital and Trust in the Formation of Virtual Organizations

Many community based agencies engage in collaboration in order to solve community problems no one organization can accomplish on its own. One such form of collaboration is the virtual organization. A virtual organization is an organization that relies on multi-party, co-operative agreements between structural, temporal, and sometimes geographic boundaries. Looking narrowly at virtual organizations on the community level is one approach which allows for better understanding of why and how community based collaboration takes place. The objective of this research is to examine the extent to which virtual organizations are utilized by community agencies while simultaneously understanding the role both social capital and trust play in the formation of these organizations. By surveying human service agencies in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected on virtual organizations that exist in this community. Both social capital and trust appear to be two of the driving forces in the formation of virtual organizations across social service agencies. This research seeks to better understand virtual organizations as well as the associated successes and failures

Trust and its relationships with knowledge sharing and virtual team effectiveness

Virtual teams represent one form of organization structure that revolutionize the workplace and provide organizations with unprecedented levels of flexibility and responsiveness.However, implementing virtual teams could be quite challenging especially if it involves different languages, time zones, and communication styles.Most importantly, the autonomy of the virtual environment may cause team members to distort social and contextual information,and with limited proximal communication between team members,it can create a lack of trust among members of the virtual team members which can significantly reduce the effectiveness of these teams.Hence, this paper reports a study conducted to examine the relationship between trust and virtual teams effectiveness, by looking into the mediating effect of knowledge sharing.Results of hierarchical regression analysis indicated that knowledge sharing and all the three types of trust are significantly related to virtual team effectiveness.However, only personality- based trust and institutional-based trust are significantly related to knowledge sharing, but knowledge sharing only partially mediates the relationship between these two types of trust and team effectiveness

Communication, Collaboration, and Trust within Virtual Teams

Virtual teams have gained much popularity within in the past 20 years, and the impacts of COVID-19 have only increased their popularity and usage within organizations. Virtual teams provide an organization to be adaptable, cut costs, and increase their knowledge base; however, virtual teams are not without their challenges. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand how leadership can impact virtual team performance through enhancing communication, collaboration, and trust. Through participant responses, three main themes were developed. These themes were issues with communication, communication and trust, and organizational culture. Two sub-themes within issues with communication were identified as; availability and response time, and personal preference. These themes were shown to directly impact participants and their organizations

Importance Of Diversified Leadership Roles In Improving Team Effectiveness In A Virtual Collaboration Learning Environment

Virtual teams enabled by information and communications technologies (ICT) are increasingly being adopted not only by for-profit organizations but also by education institutions as well. This study investigates what contributes to the success of virtual learning teams. Specifically, we examine the issue of leadership in virtual learning teams. The study first reviews the current literature on teams, leadership, and trust then proposes a framework of team effectiveness of virtual learning teams. A field study is conducted to investigate the influence of several independent variables including diversified leadership roles, leadership effectiveness, team trust, and propensity to trust. It is found that diversified leadership roles influences both leadership effectiveness and team trust; both leadership effectiveness and propensity to trust influence team trust, and team trust in turn directly impacts team effectiveness. In addition, team trust mediates the relationship between leadership effectiveness and team effectiveness. Some practical implications of the results are discussed as well

Trust: The Panacea of Virtual Management

As more and more information systems (IS) development teams work in distributed arrangements, concerns about enhancing virtual workers’ effectiveness will become more common and important for IS management. Trust between managers and employees can potentially enhance employee effectiveness by reducing uncer- tainty and increasing satisfaction and commitment. To study this, employees’ perceptions of interpersonal trust between themselves and their manager in both a virtual management and a non-virtual management environ- ment were quantitatively examined (n = 631). Contrary to suggestions in the literature, it was found that trust had a larger impact on key outcome variables such as job satisfaction and job stress for non-virtually-managed workers than it did for virtual workers. The results also suggest that cognition-based trust is more important than affect-based trust in a virtual workplace. Managers should concentrate on activities that demonstrate their competence, responsibility and professionalism, since this increases cognition-based trust. Although trust is an important determinant of effectiveness for organizations to manage, it does not appear to be any more important in a virtual setting than it is in a non-virtual setting

Virtual teams are here to stay: how personality traits, virtuality and leader gender impact trust in the leader and team commitment

Teleworking has, today, become a necessity for many organizations, so effective virtual team management is critical. This study analyzes the influence of the personality traits of virtual team workers on team efficiency. To do so we examine the effects of subordinates’ personalities on the trust they give the virtual team leader and the impact of this trust on commitment to the team. We also discuss how the team's degree of virtuality and the leader’s gender influence the relationship between personality and trust. The findings showed that extroversion has a positive effect on trust felt in the leader, and that this trust has a positive effect on commitment felt toward the team. On the other hand, it was observed that neuroticism had a more negative effect on trust in more virtual environments. The leader’s gender had no significant effect. The study offers advice for virtual team management and discusses its limitations and future research directions

Understanding Collaborations in Virtual World

Virtual worlds (VW) have paved a new and important channel for workplace collaborations. However, analysts have noted that several organizations that made a strong entrance into using VW as a nouveau channel for communication and collaboration are stepping back due to limited user response. Motivated by this fact, we propose a trust-theoretic ‘virtual world collaboration model’ for collaborations in virtual worlds. The model, grounded in literature on ‘technology adoption’ and ‘trust’, theoretically examines the role of trust in motivating users for using this rich virtual communication medium for collaborations. Results establish the important roles of perceived social presence and perceived structural assurance for fostering user trust in VW. Further, results also indicate that user trust is significantly related to both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, which in turn influence the behavioural intention to use the VW. Implications for research and practice are discussed

Communicating trustworthiness and building trust in interorganizational virtual organizations

We propose a theory of trust in interorganizational virtual organizations that focuses on how trustworthiness can be communicated and trust built in this environment. The theory highlights three issues that must be dealt with if the potential obstacles to the development of trust in the virtual context are to be overcome. These are communication of trustworthiness facilitated by reliable Information and Communication Technology (ICT), establishment of a common business understanding, and strong business ethics. We propose four specific propositions relating to these issues, and suggest topics to be explored in future research. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved

The mediating influence of organizational trust on the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction in the virtual workplace

Research has shown how leadership influences job satisfaction and organizational trust in the virtual workplace. With an increasing number of organizations shifting to these work environments, it is essential to study the effect of leadership on virtual workers. Prior studies suggest that leadership behaviors significantly impact job satisfaction (Hacker et al., 2019), and leadership plays a crucial role in inspiring employees to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization in a virtual workplace (Miller, 2020). Specifically, transformational leadership behaviors that shape the mindset and actions of employees are significant (Abelha et al., 2018). This study proposed a mediation model in which organizational trust influenced the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction. Using a quantitative cross-sectional research design, the researcher addressed the research questions and objectives. This study collected data via an online survey from 415 virtual U.S. workers recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Findings from this research study support the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction in the virtual workplace. The study also provides statistical evidence that organizational trust indirectly affects the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction in the virtual workplace. The findings from this study could contribute to training and leadership development initiatives within organizations by recognizing the circumstances that heighten the demand for human capital investments and identifying factors that enable transformational leadership to benefit job satisfaction in the virtual workplace