A Multi-Level View of the Antecedents and Consequences of Trust in Virtual Leaders

Although trust is widely acknowledged as critical to virtual teams, little is known regarding the causes and consequences of trust in leaders of virtual teams. This paper examines the antecedents and consequences of trust in virtual team leaders. Using survey and archival data from a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), this study’s findings show that trust in the leader is affected by team members’ use of synchronous communication and breadth of communication with leaders as well as team members’ distance from each other. Furthermore, reasoning that team size and culture create a shared context qualifying team members’ experiences, we found that team size and collectivistic values diminished the benefits of synchronous communication and breadth of communication, respectively. The findings also revealed that trust in leaders had a positive relationship to team performance. Detailed discussion of the findings is provided in the conclusion of the paper.