Interpersonal trust in cross-functional, geographically distributed work: A longitudinal study

With increasing globalization and the proliferation of communication technologies, more people are working in cross-functional, geographically distributed teams. Although trust is clearly an important ingredient in these collaborations, little is known about the challenges this new work and social environment creates for the development of trust. Different disciplinary perspectives, different regional or national cultures, and the lack of face-to-face interaction when working at a distance raise significant barriers to developing trust between distant co-workers. We, therefore, posit that traditional models of trust need to be adapted to describe the development of trust between cross-functional, geographically distributed partners. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a longitudinal study of architecture, engineering and construction management students engaged in designing and planning a $5 million construction project in distributed teams. Our results suggest that cross-functional, geographically distributed workers may rely on early impressions of perceived trustworthiness when evaluating how their distant partners are delivering on commitments, because reliable information about actual follow-through is lacking or difficult to interpret. Consistent with this, we found that perceived trustworthiness, perceived follow-through and trust were relatively stable over time. We conclude that initial perceptions of trustworthiness are particularly important in cross-functional, geographically distributed work, although research is needed to draw comparisons with traditional work environments. # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-831-869-1700; fax: +1-650-725-6014. E-mail address: [email protected] (R. Zolin). 1471-7727/$ see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2003.09.002