Trust in Virtual teams in Multinational Corporations

Abstract

The technology advancement has brought globalization in the world economy. Multinational corporations have their business spread around the different countries of the world. Virtual teams are formed to establish a communication among the employees, customers and the company. The members of virtual teams belong to different nation, culture, language, geography and time zone. This paper is aimed to explore the challenges in establishing and maintaining trust in the virtual teams of the multinational companies. The challenges are highlighted by evaluating recent research on team work, cross-cultural communication, electronic communication and organizational and interpersonal trust.

Trust in Virtual teams in Multinational Corporations

Introduction

With the technological advancement, multinational corporations are mostly involved in forming virtual project teams that communicate with the help of electronic devices in order to carry out their everyday business practices. A virtual team is supposed to be an evolutionary form of a network organization with enhanced communication and information technology. Virtual teams involve individuals from all around the world having different competencies and skills in order to bring dynamic change in the market place. When a company expands its business, it is highly required by the organizations to utilize foreign based subcontracting labor and to fulfill these needs, organizations from virtual teams. Virtual teams guarantee responsiveness, flexibility, improved resources and lower costs. With the combination of these effective factors, organizations are able to meet the challenging demands of ever changing global business environments.

Problem Statement

Virtual teams are group of people working together for particular purpose across different space, time and organization boundaries using technology to communicate and collaborate. An increasing number of firms are adopting virtual teams whose members are (1) geographically distributed, (2) electronically linked, (3) functionally and/or culturally diverse and laterally connected have emerged as a viable, alternative organizing method. Virtual teams are responsible for decision making and implementing those important decisions in multinational corporations. While there are great advantages in adoption to virtual teams, they face many challenges involving trust.

Importance of Problem

Virtual teams are particularly vulnerable to mistrust, communication break downs, conflicts, and power struggles (Rosen et al., 2007). Trust is one of the key elements to build successful interaction, effective communication, and team cohesiveness. More difficulties can rise with the absence of trust. Asking for opinion can become more difficult and that can mislead the company's strategic goal.

Importance of Problem to be researched

The subject of virtual teams has not been explored enough, and researchers are encouraging more analyses to be made. Virtuality requires trust to make it work. We will have to discover how to run organizations on trust than on control. Virtual team members must have clear understanding of cultural and functional differences among different members of team. They should have ability and willingness to share knowledge with other members. According to Kirkman et al.(2002), “Building trust requires rapid responses to electric communications from team members, reliable performance, and consistent follow through.”

It is assumed by the conventional wisdom that trust is actually formed on the basis of strong past ...