Fear and distrust in global software engineering projects

When global software engineering (GSE) is understood as knowledge intensive collaborative work, many of the reasons for the problems encountered in GSE projects can be traced back to the social conditions framing the collaboration between people at different physical sites. A total of 59 interviews were conducted in eight GSE projects of two large software companies with sites in Finland and other countries. As a result of categorization of problems related to group relations, the lack of trust between the main site and the other sites, and the fear of negative personal consequences among the project employees at the main site due to introduction of GSE were found to be the major problems in the projects. Our analysis suggests that poorly communicated reasoning for GSE can lay the ground for fear and for distrust between employees at remote sites. Unfulfilled cognitive expectations and fear related to one's professional future were found to be the sources of distrust toward employees at off-site locations. The main contribution of this study is a novel empirical description of the linkages between fear and distrust in GSE. In addition, practical implications to effectively implement an organizational change from collocated development to distributed development are suggested. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.