A Framework of Fostering Trust in Virtual Teams

Virtual teams are becoming a natural phenomenon in most of the organizations. There are many reasons in present day, which are leading for formation of these teams. Even though there are challenges to make these teams work effectively, some advantages take prominence over the challenges. This paper explores one of the important challenges among global virtual teams – Trust . Trust could be a challenge in any type of team. It could also be a potential advantage for any team if they can achieve and retain this factor among team members. Virtual teams work with variations in location, culture and time. It is more difficult in virtual teams to overcome the trust challenge. This paper discusses the analysis on Trust in virtual teams with integrating case studies. The reflection of this paper opens up areas that would require future research. Importance and fragility of trust is illustrated in different stages of virtual team. The paper also investigates the elements like communication and coordination might facilitate the trust in global virtual teams. Note: Slides from the presentation associated with this project are included here as a Supplemental File