Trust Is in the Eye of the Beholder: A Vignette Study of Postevent Behavioral Controls' Effects on Individual Trust in Virtual Teams

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dennis, Alan R.; Robert, Lionel P., Jr.; Curtis, Aaron M.; Kowalczyk, Stacy T.; Hasty, Bryan K.
• 署名单位: Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington; IU Kelley School of Business; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Brigham Young University; Brigham Young University - Hawaii; Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington; Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT); United States Department of Defense; United States Air Force; US Air Force Research Laboratory
• 刊物名称: INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7047
• DOI: 10.1287/isre.1110.0364
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 546-558
• 关键词: INTERPERSONAL-TRUST; performance; INFORMATION; systems; sensitivity; COOPERATION; management; MODEL; trustworthiness; COMMUNICATION

摘要

Research in face-to-face teams shows conflicting results about the impact of behavioral controls on trust; some research shows that controls increase the salience of good behavior, which increases trust while other research shows that controls increase the salience of poor behavior that decreases trust. The only study in virtual teams, which examined poorly functioning teams, found that controls increased the salience of poor behavior, which decreased trust. We argue that in virtual teams behavioral controls amplify the salience of all behaviors (positive and negative) and that an individual's selective perception bias influences how these behaviors are interpreted. Thus the link from behavioral controls to trust is more complex than first thought. We conducted a 2 x 2 experiment, varying the use of behavioral controls (controls, no controls) and individual team member behaviors (reneging behaviors designed to reduce trust beliefs and fulfilling behaviors designed to increase trust beliefs). We found that behavioral controls did amplify the salience of all behaviors; however, contrary to what we expected, this actually weakened the impact of reneging and fulfilling behaviors on trust. We believe that completing a formal evaluation increased empathy and the awareness of context in which the behaviors occurred and thus mitigated extreme perceptions. We also found that behavioral controls increased the selective perception bias which induced participants to see the behaviors their disposition to trust expected rather than the behaviors that actually occurred.