Computer Science

Colloquium Details

Developing Trust in Virtual Teams

Abstract

Recent attention to the virtual organization suggests that distributed work groups and teams collaborating at a distance are becoming increasingly common to all organizations. By bridging time and space and packaging information in new ways, such innovations as electronic mail, videophones, faxes, computerized group support systems, electronic whiteboards, multimedia, virtual reality, and computer agents are enabling instantaneous distributed communication, the creation of virtual teams, and the exchange of information in ways not imagined just a few years ago. With these promising developments, however, have come new challenges for organizations. It means teams must work closely together, learn from each other, and accomplish specific goals, all without the ability to easily meet face-to-face. It means managers must figure out how to motivate distant team members to carry out the work at a distance, and team members must be able to understand and respond appropriately to requests from others. It means overcoming technical problems associated with technologies that are not yet "seamless" and where tasks are performed by diversely skilled people with different values and lifestyles, and behaviors toward work.

A major challenge for distant teams like these is to quickly develop and maintain interpersonal working relationships with people that they hardly know, and may never meet again, with the goal of producing interdependent work while using computer-based communication technologies to collaborate. As part of a larger research program, we collected longitudinal data from 15 student teams located at geographically distant universities. Our aim is to providing a theoretical and empirical explanation of what temporary, distributed teams do to produce and maintain trust as a foundation for cooperative and interdependent work. I will argue that electronic communication changes the way people interact, in what they say, how they say it, and how it is interpreted and evaluated by others. Our data suggest that the role leaders play in distant teams can also improve performance. The implications for managing distant teams will be discussed.

Biography

Suzanne Weisband is an Associate Professor in Management Information Systems (MIS) at the University of Arizona. She holds a Ph.D. in Social and Decision Sciences and Policy Analysis from Carnegie Mellon University. Suzie's research examines social and technological aspects of information sharing in teams and groups, and how that information affects work group collaboration and learning over time. She teaches courses on the social and ethical issues of computing, research methods, computing and organizations, systems design, human computer interaction, and usability testing. She has published her work in leading management and information systems journals. Her research has been funded by NSF and the Army Research Institute for the Social and Behavioral Sciences.