Abstract
Trust plays a central role in team collaboration, especially in multinational virtual teams. However, our understanding of how different types of trust interact to influence group work efficiency in this context is still limited. This study investigates the development of two types of trust and group efficiency over time in the multinational virtual team context. Three analysis phases were conducted in this research: phase 1 included a qualitative analysis of an online interview with 120 respondents in multinational virtual team collaborations over 5 weeks, phase 2 comprised a general analysis of the trust and group efficiency development with the same respondents, and phase 3 included a quantitative analysis of the interaction effects of trust on group efficiency. The results provide insights into the antecedents of group efficiency and reveal the trend of trust and group efficiency development over time. The authors also investigate trust and group efficiency from the deconstructed and decomposed perspectives. This study contributes to current research by providing evidence on the development of trust and group efficiency and by investigating the interaction effects of trust in the multinational virtual team collaboration context.
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Acknowledgements
We sincerely thank the editor and anonymous reviewers’ constructive comments and suggestions that are very helpful for the development of this paper. This research is partially supported by funding from the National Natural Science of China (No.71501044, 71571045), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in UIBE (16YQ07, CXTD10-06).
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Appendix
Appendix
Constructs and measurement items | References |
|---|---|
Reliability-based trust at the individual level I did what I promised to do this week I did what I said I would do this week I fulfilled all tasks as we agreed this week | Cheng et al. (2016c) |
Reliability-based trust at the group level The group did what we promised to do this week The group did what we said they would do this week The group fulfilled all tasks we agreed to do this week | Cheng et al. (2016c) |
Openness-based trust at the individual level I was open to my group about my progress this week I kept my group fully informed about my progress this week I told the group everything about my progress this week | Cheng et al. (2016c) |
Openness-based trust at the group level The group was open to me about the progress this week The group kept me fully informed about our progress this week The group told me everything about our progress this week | Cheng et al. (2016c) |
Group efficiency Overall, I think we have established less/more group efficiency in our team this week | He et al. (2007) |
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Cheng, X., Bao, Y., Yu, X. et al. Trust and Group Efficiency in Multinational Virtual Team Collaboration: A Longitudinal Study. Group Decis Negot 30, 529–551 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10726-020-09722-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10726-020-09722-x