Non-equivalent Communication Technology Impact on Trust in Partially Distributed Conceptual Design Teams

In this workshop paper, we examined how non-equivalent communication technologies impact on trust in partially distributed conceptual design teams. To incorporate the uniqueness of partially distributed team setting, we distinguished trust into two categories, which were trust towards distant partners (distant trust) and trust towards colocated partners (co-located trust). Findings revealed that media has a varying impact on distant trust depending on different combinations of communication technologies utilized in the experiment. Further research directions are discussed. Author Keywords Trust; Distant trust; Co-located trust; Partially distributed team; Computer-mediated communication; Conceptual design; ACM Classification Keywords H.5.3. Information interfaces and presentation: Group and Organization Interfaces. General Terms Human Factors; Design; Experimentation. INTRODUCTION Organizations frequently utilize partially distributed teams to overcome geographical distances, to increase flexibility, and to become more responsive to the global market [2,3]. Partially distributed team consists of two or more sub-teams that are geographically distributed [6]. In such setting, communication within sub-teams occurs face-to-face, while communication between sub-teams is attained through communication technologies. The communication difficulty intensifies and further impacts trust in distributed work settings due to the lack of physical context and spatial reference [5]. The absence of physical context significantly impedes the process of relationship building, and the lack of spatial reference complicates the communication process due to limited paralinguistic cues, which may further have a negative impact on trust. In this regard, communication technology becomes influential on trust, as it has differing capacities of transferring physical contexts and spatial references. In this workshop paper, we aim to examine how different combinations of communication technologies impact on trust. Specifically, we aim to examine non-equivalent communication technologies, such as communication over laptops to mobile devices. As recent distant collaboration became more fast-paced, partially distributed team members may use a variety of communication devices to collaborate with their distant colleagues. For instance, team members in a conference room may use a full-fledged telepresence system, while another team member who is on a business trip may join the conference using a mobile device. Despite the feasibility of such scenario, there is a lack of empirical studies that examined trust in such conditions. In this regard, we report results from a laboratory experiment that examined participants’ perceived trust level towards their distant partners (distant trust) and co-located partners (co-located trust) using different combinations of communication technology in the context of partially distributed conceptual design work. EXPERIMENT A one-way between subjects ANOVA was conducted to compare the media effect on trust level in four different communication technology conditions: • COND1: Telepresence to telepresence • COND2: Telepresence to laptop (tablet PC) • COND3: Telepresence to mobile device • COND4: Laptop to mobile device A total of 64 junior or senior undergraduate students (25 females and 39 males) participated to form 16 four-person groups. Each four-person group consisted of two dyad subgroups, where these sub-groups were separated in two different rooms to simulate a partially distributed team. Then, each group collaboratively worked as a team to complete a conceptual design task. None of the participants had prior experience of working together, nor had prior acquaintance with their group members. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. CSCW ’13, February 23–27, 2013, San Antonio, Texas, USA. Copyright 2013 ACM 978-1-4503-1331-5/13/02...$15.00.