Managing distance in a global virtual team: the evolution of trust through technology-mediated relational communication

Virtual teams offer the potential for the efficient combination of a dispersed workforce and the potential for leveraging diffuse knowledge and skills effectively for collaborative innovation. Information technology plays an important role in virtual teams, but virtual teamwork also involves significant social redesign. Trust is argued to be an important component in team development and effectiveness, and within this paper we explore the role and development of trust in the early stages of a virtual team. On the basis of findings from a web-based questionnaire and interviews with global virtual team members in a major telecommunications company it appears that communications technology supports relationship building in tasks related to information sharing and storing and relational communication to a lesser degree. The antecedents of trust in the virtual team identified are similar to the antecedents of trust in a traditional collocated team context, and it appears that virtual team leaders and members approach virtual teams as an extension of traditional teamwork. On the basis of the research results it is argued that relational communication and psychosocial factors such as trust, commitment and communication play an important role in the functioning of virtual teams. It is also suggested that where virtual team leaders and members attempt to approach virtual teams as an extension of traditional teamwork, many of the potential benefits may not be realized while much of the expense related to virtual teamwork remains. Copyright (C) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.