Interpersonal trust and trustworthiness estimation in temporary Virtual project teams

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Interpersonal trust and trustworthiness
estimation in temporary Virtual project teams

• Ellen Rusman
• Open University of the Netherlands,
• 10th of May,
• miniconference Master Active Learning on
• Learning Networks in Practice

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Source centre for effective organisations http//
www.marshall.usc.edu/web/CEO.cfm?doc_id5181
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What can go wrong with Virtual project teams?

• No or low interaction frequency between people
• Low interaction quality only information
  exchange,no knowledge co-construction and
  exchange of perspectives
• No contuinity of communication and interaction
• No visibility and awareness of each others
  accomplishments
• Misunderstandings and an extential grounding
  phase
• Not everybody is active hikers and lurkers
• Conflict and flaming incidents
• Delay in product delivery or wrong product
  characteristics
• Increased amount of time spent on project
• (Häkkinen, 2004 Jarvenpaa Leidner, 2000,
  Kirschner, 2002, Walther, 2005)

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Interpersonal trust as a favourable condition for
collaboration

• Walther (2005) trust in virtual groups has
  been found to be positively related to
  performance, problem solving and uncertainty
  resolution as well as social information
  exchange (p.2)
• Raes (2005) found that a perceived high level of
  interpersonal trust within a team related to a
  low level of experienced personal and task
  conflicts
• Corbitt (2004) We confirm that trust is
  important to team performance for both virtual
  and face-to-face teams. Higher trust teams do
  tend to perform better. (p.1)
• gt General agreement that interpersonal trust
  within a group positively influences
  collaboration

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But, what exactly is (interpersonal) trust? (1)

• Trust is a phenomenon looked at from
• Different disciplines, like psychology,
  sociology, economics, management and more
  recently informatics (a nice overview by Ulivieri
  (2005) is available on the website of the T3
  centre)
• At different levels (Chopra, 2003)- individual
  as a personality trait- interpersonal social
  tie from one actor to another (the
  trustor and the trustee)- relational emergent
  property of a mutual relationship- societal
  feature of a whole community

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But, what exactly is (interpersonal) trust? (2)

• Difference between cognitive (rational-based) and
  affective (emotion-based) trust
• As a consequence different modeling approaches
  (modeled as the trusting behaviour of the
  trustor, the estimated probability that a trustee
  is fulfilling the by the trustor expected
  behaviour, a continuum, a factorial model)
• Focus in research is on cognitive-based
  interpersonal trust- a tie from one actor to
  another (trustor trustee)- rational, based on
  partial knowledge of trustee

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But, what exactly is interpersonal trust? (3)

• Castelfranchi (2006) concept of (interpersonal)
  trust used in three different manners
• Simple evaluation of a potential trustee (trust
  disposition) (formation of mental model)
• Evaluation and decision to trust (trust
  descision) (calculation/assessment)
• The act of trusting (display of trusting
  behaviour by the trustor) (act of trusting)
  (acting)

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But, what exactly is interpersonal trust? (4)

• Overlap between definitions of cognitively based
  interpersonal trust (Mayer, 1995 Rousseau, 1998
  Castelfranchi, 2000 Riegelsberger, 2005)
• A positive psychological state/ belief of a
  trustor towards a trustee
• Comprising positive expectations of the
  intentions/behaviour of the trustee
• In a situation/context
• Involving risk/uncertainty
• While trying to accomplish a goal
• And where the trustor is dependent on the trustee
• and is still willing to accept vulnerability

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What is influencing interpersonal trust?

• The level of interpersonal trust experienced by
  the trustor depends on (Arnold, 1998a
  Castelfranchi, 1999 Gambetta, 1988
  Riegelsberger, 2004)
• General trust predisposition (e.g. general
  attitude towards trust, mood and perception) of
  the trustor
• Characteristics of the context (risk, complexity,
  nature of, locus of control)
• Perceived trustworthiness of trustee (assessment
  of person, internal and external outcome
  attribution)
• gt So one of the factors influencing
  interpersonal trust is perceived trustworthiness
  the belief that someone is worthy to trust.

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How do people get a sense of trustworthiness?

• By creating a mental model (belief) of a person
  based (Castelfranchi 2006, Riegelsberger, 2005)
  on info acquired through different routes
• first impression/assessment of personal
  characteristics (identity/status)
  (prominence-interpretation theory)
• By direct interaction with a person
  (identity/status reputation)
• By interaction of others with a person
  (reputation multi-facet concept)
• By surrounding organisational systems
  characteristics

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What are the components of a mental model for
trustworthiness? (1)
Riegelsberger, 2005
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What are the components of a mental model for
trustworthiness? (2)
Derived from literature on measurement of
(interpersonal) trust and trustworthiness,
e.g. (Rotter, 1967 Butler, 1991 Feng, Lazar
Preece, 2004 Rempel, Holmes Zanna, 1985 Hoy,
2003 Zolin, Johnson Swap, 1982 Cummings
Bromiley, 1996 Cook and Wall, 1980)
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How to assess all those components of
trustworthiness?
Example from f2f
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An illustration.
Coronet instructional film (1950),
http//www.archive.org/details/AmITrust1950
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• Virtual teams collaborate on a task in a mediated
  (textbased) environment
• Normal signals (e.g. facial expressions) and
  routes (e.g. reputational information) for
  trustbuilding are different and/or lacking in a
  mediated environment
• Especially first impression and direct
  interaction are available
• Interpersonal trust between team members
  positively influences interaction
• Offer alternative manners to foster trust in a
  Virtual team

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Peter Steiner, 1993, The New Yorker
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Personal identity profile which helps to form a
mental model on trustworthiness
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Pilot European Virtual seminar

• Teams of 4 people
• From different universities across Europe
• Didnt know eachother in advance
• Solving a complex environmental problem
• Offer a static PIP (Personal Identity Profile)
  in order to accelerate initial trust building
• Ask about role of PIP acceptability of presenting
  dynamic info on behaviour to team members

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Personal identity profile
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Other categories

• Personal
• About me
• Interests and hobbies
• Expectations of the project
• Availability for project
• Expertise areas
• Field of interest
• Learn and work experiences
• Suggestions

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First results

• Questionnaires
• Analysis of conversations
• 13 interviews
• some fragments from interviews- student 1
  20 sec.- student 2 30 sec.
• gt Seems to have positive influence

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Future research and development

• Validate instrument to measure perceived
  trustworthiness
• Optimize static part of Pexpi
• Test with improved version of static part of
  Pexpi
• Define relevant dynamic information
• Develop dynamic part of Pexpi
• Test with final version (static dynamic) part
  of Pexpi

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Example data dynamic part Pexpi

• Last log in time, logged-in time, number of
  log-ins, created/modified/read/commented on x
  documents
• Finished activities/tasks
• Amount of knowledge shared with others in a
  project
• Produced products and rating of peers in project
• Average response time on questions of peers
• Rated quality of posts and responses by peers
• Frequency of contribution per user
• Participation and place in groups number of
  contacts between project members, density of
  social network around user in this project
  (strong/weak ties)
• Task list, status of task, planned completion
  time, factual completion time, completed tasks

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Examples of dynamic data
Erickson e.a. (2004) Task proxy
Xiong (1999) People garden
Lee e.a.(2002) People Browser
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Thank you for your attention !

• Any questions or suggestions?
• ellen.rusman_at_ou.nl
• See also http//www.cooper-project.org/