When Trust Does Not Matter

The chapter focuses on the dynamics of trust and distrust through presenting a qualitative field study of interorganizational collaboration between customers and providers in the Polish IT industry that illustrates practices of communication between parties engaged in collaboration within IT projects. The chapter is intended to merge two perspectives: the academic viewpoint on the theorizing of trust and distrust, and the practitioners’ reflections on the reality of relationships in business. The author hopes that the study may further our understanding of the process of cooperation in project work, provide an interesting insight into the role of trust in cooperation; and offer a reflective account of actual practice of cooperation in a distrustful environment.

Building Trust in Networked Environments

As organizations grow and become multi-national, distributed work, i.e. work where members are located in different sites, cities or countries usually follows (Meyerson, Weick et al. 1996; Jarvenpaa and Leidner 1999; Zolin and Hinds 2002; Hossain and Wigand 2004; Panteli 2005). Yet, such teams and groups have fewer opportunities to build social networks as is common in traditional groups, such as time spent together and frequent informal interaction. The “paradox of trust” in distributed work then, is that while trust is a “need to have”-asset” for distributed work groups – in particular for knowledge work – it is also difficult to foster due to the lack of physical co-location (Handy 1995). This article argues that one way to deal with the paradox is to recognize the importance of trust as generated through individuals that have trustful ties that cross central boundaries; i.e. trust brokers. Based on a relational approach to trust in groups, as well as empirical studies of distributed work groups, we argue that trust brokers can help to establish trust quickly and make the group operate in more robust and sustainable ways.

Media and Familiarity Effects on Assessing Trustworthiness

This chapter explores the role media effects and familiarity play in the development of trust in CMC environments. As team members interact with one another via technology, each team member assesses information and makes assessments about the trustworthiness of their teammates. Such trustworthiness assessments are known to influence trust, a factor which has been established to have significant effects on the functioning of teams. This research uses media synchronicity theory and the concept of interpersonal familiarity to examine virtual team interactions and the formation of trust. Implications are drawn for researchers and managers as they seek to understand how teams operate in virtual environments.

When Is a Duck Not a Duck? When It Is a Euro! Trust-Based Marketing Communications in Virtual Communities

This chapter tries to evaluate the effects of the propagation of a trust-based marketing message through selected below-the-web technologies, which are those particular types of information technologies different from websites – such as e-mails, discussion lists, BBSs, Newsgroups, Forums, Peer-to-Peer, IRCs, MUDs and MOOs – that allow for the creation of virtual communities. A preliminary experiment on informal marketing communications, carried out over 12,000 accesses to below-the-web communities and regarding the proposal to use the term “Ducks” for “Euros”, in view of its similarity with the term “Bucks” for Dollars, showed that below-the-web technologies can be an appropriate tool for building trust amongst participants when four conditions for the existence of virtual communities are met: 1) a minimum level of interactivity; 2) a variety of communicators; 3) a virtual-common-public space; and 4) a minimum level of sustained membership.

Trust in Virtual Multicultural Teams

This chapter analyses the phenomenon of trust with regard to its significance for virtual teams. Guided by the existing literature on trust, this chapter presents different kinds of trust and the development of trust over time. The challenges inherent to virtual multicultural teams, thus to working teams, which are geographically dispersed and communicate with the help of electronic media, raise the questions of their consequences on trust. As virtual teams are mostly used in companies operating in different countries all over the world, the different cultural backgrounds of the team members are taken into account as well. To give an example for the relevance of this issue in practice, an illustrative case study on experiences international business students have made during virtual team projects is presented.

Establishing Trust in Offshore Outsourcing of Information Systems and Technology (IST) Development

This chapter explores the issues and challenges faced in establishing trust among individuals and teams participating in offshore outsourcing of software development projects. While technical and project management aspects have been recognized as important for the success of offshore software outsourcing, the issue of establishing trust among the participants has not received specific recognition. The chapter discusses the special characteristics of offshore software outsourcing relationships which make the establishment of trust a challenge. The discussion emphasizes that a specific and planned approach of utilizing communication and coordination technology in software offshoring relationships will contribute towards trust formation. Use of communication and coordination technology in offshoring environments is recommended to be designed to increase the culture of communication, to establish a culture of transparency in communication, and to systemically maintain a trail and evidence of the communication.

Knowledge Management and Trust in E-Networks

This chapter focuses on trust issues relating to knowledge management. Knowledge management is increasingly reliant on information systems to identify, collect, and disperse information and knowledge. Moreover, such systems are stretching across the borders of the firm to include collaborators and their knowledge assets in e-networks. This scenario has important implications for trust between the organization and individuals who contribute to and/or use knowledge management systems. Organization-to-organization trust issues are also apparent as valuable, proprietary information and knowledge are shared across the borders of firms. The authors hope that with an increased awareness of the trust issues implicit in the burgeoning field of knowledge management, executives and managers will be better prepared to employ some of our suggestions for dealing with this complex problem.

Designing and Assessing Virtual Assurance

This chapter suggests that computer-mediated technologies (CMTs) facilitate organizational trust and distrust by leading to what we introduce as Virtual Assurance. Through partnering and outsourcing, organizations are exposed to managing simultaneous organizational trust and distrust. For instance, CMTs allow more precise and timely monitoring of organizations in a high trust and high distrust context, a process that leads to Virtual Assurance. We further describe Virtual Assurance as a means to manage the fragility of modern interorganizational relationships, especially when high trust and high distrust is present. We also suggest that the presence of Virtual Assurance will ultimately provide a competitive advantage to firms in making contractual agreements, tracking progress, imposing penalties, and shielding organizations from potential harm.

An Examination of Team Trust in Virtual Environments

The purpose of this chapter is to examine ways to help build trust in virtual environments. More business and decision-making is being accomplished using virtual teams. These people seldom meet face-to-face but they work together toward common goals. A crucial factor in determining the success or failure of virtual teams is trust. Successful techniques for promoting and building an atmosphere of trust within virtual teams and maintaining that trust are a primary focus of the chapter. Learning organizations are discussed as a vehicle for promoting attentive listening, sharing information, mutual scholarship, and meeting expectations through innovation and networking.

Trust Types and Information Technology in the Process of Business Cooperation

This chapter deals with how IT influences the different levels and types of trust that arise in business cooperation relationships. Trust is specially important for cooperation and communication is essential along its different stages. So, the role of IT is key for trust development, because IT offers greater possibilities of access to more and better information, and increases the chances of interaction between the agents who use these technologies. We analyze how IT can affect trust from different perspectives and typologies along the process of business cooperation which begins with the initial decision to cooperate, and follows with the selection of potential partners, the negotiation and structure definition, management, evaluation and relationship evolution. At each stage we comment some possibilities of promoting different trust types through IT to improve cooperation performance.