Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-1-2006

Abstract

A changing business environment with urgency in delivering more products faster and cheaper is imposing new demands on teams where old ways of doing business are becoming obsolete. Much of the resulting interdependence of business activity in the global environment is a key driver in trying to establish effective distributed collaborative teams, also known as virtual teams. As such they are unable to always operate optimally or produce optimal solutions--forcing organizations to reexamine their project team strategies both at the individual and group level. Organizations have applied electronic mediating solutions of various types to support such virtual teams but this has produced mixed results. Such teams are still challenged from being physically disconnected and as a result the needed leadership, social exchanges, accountability and collaboration are difficult to achieve in support of initiating and or sustaining team trust. This paper is a proposal to explore qualitatively how technology and process impacts positively and or negatively mediating factors that directly influence distributed team trust and performance. A conceptual model is described with potential variables identified. The proposed research focuses on evaluating and revising the conceptual model through qualitative methods. To this end, a set of research questions and hypothesis has been identified. Finally, an additional objective is to synthesize the insights gained from this study and construct appropriate models to either update or replace the proposed models contained in this proposal.

Keywords

technological innovations, trust, swift trust, collaboration, accountability, empathy and virtual team and swift collaboration

Rights

© The Author(s). Kelvin Smith Library provides access for non-commercial, personal, or research use only. All other use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication or transmission, whether by electronic means or otherwise, without prior written permission is strictly prohibited.

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