Knowledge and Process Management

Volume 14 Number 3 pp 158–168 (2007)

Published online in Wiley InterScience

84

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/kpm.2

& Research Article

An Analysis of Trust Among GloballyDistributed Work Teams in anOrganizational Setting

Sue Newell1,2*,y, Gary David2 and Donald Chand2

1Warwick University, UK2Bentley College, USA

*CorForeE-maySueColleUniv

Cop

Regardless of whether a project team is located in the same workplace or distributed around theworld, trust remains an important element deemed necessary to facilitate knowledge sharingand collaborative work. At the same time, distribution across sites presents challenges to trustbuilding that are not present among co-located teams. A further complicating factor in trustbuilding among distributed teams is national culture. As we demonstrate, the impact ofnationality can be increased when organizations put the distributed sites in a competitiveframe. Using the Newell and Swan threefold typology of trust, this paper analyzes trust amongIT work teams whose members are located at sites that are distributed in the United States,Ireland, and India. Our case analysis confirms the problematic nature of trust building amongglobally distributed teams. Specifically, we found that due to situational factors and socio-psychological dynamics an ‘Us versus Them’ attitude prevails among the distributed sites. Thispaper concludes that the traditional approaches used by organizations to address the challengesof global collaboration are insufficient and that trust building in an organizational settingrequires project managers to actively work on relationship management to minimize the impact ofan inter-group perspective. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

As firms’ boundaries are increasingly spanningacross national borders, workers are finding thatthey need to collaborate and work on a daily basiswith others whom they may not have met before,who live andwork in places they have never visited,and whose lifestyles and societies they know littleabout. These collaborations occur in an environ-

respondence to: Sue Newell, AAC 239, Bentley College, 175st Street, Waltham, Massachusetts 02452, USA.il: snewell@bentley.eduNewell is Cammarata Professor of Management, Bentelyge, USA and Professor of Information Systems, Warwickersity, UK.

yright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

ment where communication is mediated primarilythrough technology. Previous research has estab-lished that trust is an important condition withinany work team since teamwork is dependent onknowledge sharing and knowledge sharing isinfluenced by the degree of trust that exists betweenpeople (Chowdhury, 2005; Politis, 2003). Researchalso suggests that trust may be more difficult toestablish in teams which are geographically dis-persed, especially among those teams that includemembers from different countries (Jarvenpaaet al., 1998). Likewise, the cross-cultural literature(e.g., Hofstede, 2001; Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1998) would suggest that it is going to bemore difficult to build trust when people come from

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different cultural backgrounds, because there areidentifiable global differences in national culturesthat can be represented as dichotomous valuesystems. Zakaria et al. (2004) conclude that ‘Groupcollaboration is a complex matter, with or withoutelectronic technology and the diverse nature ofglobal teams accentuates the issue of culturaldifference’ (p. 25).

This creates an important challenge for globalcorporations: how to establish trust and colla-borative relationships in teams that are distributedin different countries so that they will workeffectively together, sharing information andknowledge that is needed to complete the jointwork successfully. This paper brings out thechallenges of fostering trust in globally distributedproject teams that firms need to understand in orderto realize the benefits of its global strategy. Wefound that situational factors rather than thenational cultural traits of the participants signifi-cantly influence the development of trust andknowledge sharing within a globally distributedwork team.

The data used and the findings reported in thepaper are based on a 3 year ongoing study of‘GLOBALIS,’ a company based in the US withsolution centers in the US, Ireland, and India. Therest of the paper is organized as follows. The secondsection reviews the trust and knowledge sharingliterature that relates to globally distributed teams,and also introduces the trust framework that is usedto perform the case analysis. The third sectiondescribes the research method and the caseorganization. The fourth section presents the caseanalysis, and the last section looks at the implica-tions of our findings, which includes a discussion ofthe social conditions necessary for effective collab-oration among workers at distributed worksites.

TRUST AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING INGLOBALLY DISTRIBUTEDENVIRONMENTS

Trust is a key ingredient in forming and maintain-ing collaborative social relationships whatever thecontext. In co-located organizational settings,research has shown that trust facilitates supportiveconduct, reduces detrimental conflict, helps thesuccessful resolution of disagreements (Earley,1986), improves project teams’ effectiveness, andpositively impacts transaction costs (Zaheer et al.,1992). More specifically, trust is important forknowledge sharing because knowledge sharingoften depends on personal connections ratherthan, or more often in addition to, the transfer of

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knowledge impersonally through codified docu-ments and standardized processes (Hansen, 1999;Orr, 1996). This is because tacit and explicitknowledge are mutually constituted (Tsoukas,1996).

Thus, in many cases documents will not beavailable or will not be sufficient to allow a novice tounderstand a system that she/he needs to work on;or a team member needs an explanation from anexpert of the codified knowledge that is availablein order to complete a task. In these cases, it willbe important to also talk to an expert who canguide the novice through the system. But thisexchange of information relies on mutually consti-tuted trust. On one hand, the expert must trustthat the novice is capable of following instructionsand using information for productive purposes thatare mutually beneficial. Likewise, the novicemust trust that by admitting help is needed theexpert will not leverage this admission of a lack ofexpertize against the novice, and that the infor-mation given will help the novice complete the taskin question. Without trust as a foundationalcomponent of the relationship, this exchange cannottake place.

Thus, trust and interacting (Meyerson et al., 1996)and trust and collaboration are mutually reinforc-ing, with trust helping to decrease the costs ofcoordination and knowledge sharing in collabora-tive settings (Henttonen and Blomqvist, 2005),thereby enhancing team development and teameffectiveness (Jarvenpaa et al., 1998). This is because,despite the technical aspects of project work, such assoftware development in the IT work place, itremains essentially a social endeavor: ‘The patternsof interaction among the participants in a softwareproject are important factors in the effectiveness ofthe team and may even have a significant impact onthe ultimate success of the project’ (Harrison andCoplien, 1996, p. 138). In software projects, knowl-edge is integrated from a wide range of domains,such as the application area, the execution environ-ment, the development environment, the com-ponent libraries, the history of the applicationsoftware, and the user environment. Typically,people with different skills and knowledge dodifferent parts of the project work and thesedifferent parts flow (more or less seamlessly) intoa final product of the project, which often is a newpiece of application software that supports aparticular business need. This process makesknowledge collaboration an integral part of ITwork. Leveraging this diverse knowledge andexperience is a major challenge, especially indistributed settings (Henttonen and Blomqvist,2005) where people from different professional

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backgrounds collaborate across time zones andnational cultures.

In order to effectively orchestrate the variouspersonnel involved in a project, global managementbecomes a central issue in distributed work (Bartlettand Ghoshal, 1988, 2003). Depending on howthe task interdependencies are structured, globalmanagers can take different approaches to integrat-ing project teams. Thompson (1967) notes threeways of structuring task interdependencies: sequen-tial, pooled, and reciprocal. Both sequential andpooled interdependency rely on sub-groups of theproject team working relatively independently ontheir portion of the project and then integrating thedifferent parts together once completed. The key insequential and pooled interdependence is precisespecification of the interfaces between the parts atthe outset. This approach minimizes collaborationand direct communication among the team mem-bers because specialist bridge roles can be assignedto coordinate and ensure that each sub-team isworking to the agreed specification.

While sequential and pooled methods are attrac-tive ways to manage task interdependency, theymay not be the most effective approaches for ITwork. First, it is difficult to establish in advancewhat the interfaces will look like. Second, it tends todrive out innovation because fixing the parametersmakes the application of novel approaches moredifficult. For this reason, many project teamsare encouraged to work in a more reciprocallyinterdependentway, continuously interacting, shar-ing knowledge, and being responsive to each other,thereby providing opportunities for synergy thatwould be missed if a more mechanistic approach tothe joint work were used.

Managing interdependence reciprocally impliessome give and take and learning from and adaptingto the ‘other.’ This implies moving beyond a‘multinational’ model to a ‘transnational’ modelof distributed work. Bartlett and Ghoshal (1988,p. 66) describe a multinational company as onethat ‘operates as [a] decentralized federation ofunits,’ versus a transnational company that has ‘theability to manage across national boundaries,retaining local flexibility while achieving globalintegration.’ This means organizations have toevolve their global strategies beyond a subservientsubsidiary structure to a collaborative structurethat is integrated vertically as well as horizontally.Furthermore, to achieve more effective pro-ductivity, these distributed units need to countera competitive impulse in order to achieve coopera-tion and decrease social distance despite thepresence of physical distance (Bettencourt et al.,1992).

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In essence, for global companies to achievetransnational integration, there needs to exist anopportunity for equal exchange and reciprocal,trust-based, relationships. Norms of reciprocityimply that we are obligated to future repaymentsof favors, gifts, invitations, etc. received fromothers (Gouldner, 1960). Anthropologist Mauss(1967) found that ‘primitive’ societies establishreciprocal social relations and solidarity throughgift exchange. This is different from a straight-forward exchange, based on a market transaction,since the returned favor is not explicitly specified.Rather, the favor implies a diffuse, generalizedobligation for reciprocity sometime in the future. Inother words, it is important that some act results inthe production of an in kind subsequent act.

The achievement of reciprocity demonstrates ashared orientation to the specificities of the situationsuch that both actors are able to make sense of theinteraction in the same way. ‘Practices, whenpersons are mutually committed to them, providea basis for strong bonds of social cohesion that canreplace traditional cultural bonds’ (Rawls andDavid, 2005, p. 491). This is what establishes thepotential for the formation of a ‘We’ versus‘Us/Them orientation or what can be referred toas the Pronoun Progression from intergroup to thecollective, or:

Us/Them

! You/I

D

!

S.OI:

We

(Intergroup) (Interpersonal) (Collective) (Conflict) (Cooperation) (Collaboration)

Research on social attribution indicates that whenpeople see each other as members of a shared group(or in-group), they are more likely to extend thebenefit of the doubt regarding any social transgres-sions (see Pettigrew, 1979; Taylor and Jaggi, 1974).Thus, by creating a social bond through theachievement of mutual intelligibility and sharedreciprocity, problems are more likely to be quicklyhandled and collaborative work possible. Thissocial bond is likely to foster trust since it is usuallyeasier to trust someone who is thought to be ‘likeme’ rather than ‘different from me.’

Thus, trust is a crucial variable in achievingglobally distributed collaborative work. Intraditional research models, trust arises fromattributes associated with trustee and trustor. Thetrustee attributes are ability, benevolence, andintegrity. Ability is the trustor’s perception of howcompetent the trustee is within a specific domain.Benevolence is the trustor’s perception of how muchthe trustee cares and will do-good to the trustorbeyond the profit motive. Integrity is the trustor’sperception of how well the trustee adheres to

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principles that make the trustee dependableand reliable. With regard to trustor’s attributes,propensity to trust is a general personality trait thatsignifies how trusting a person is. Using these fourantecedents of trust as a model of trust, researchershave studied the relative importance of these trustantecedents. For example, it has been found that inthe early stages of a relationship, integrity is moreimportant than benevolence to the formation oftrust, and cognitively based trust factors areprecursors to the development of affectively basedtrust.

Building on traditional models of trust, Newelland Swan (2000, p. 1295–1296) developed a three-fold typology of trust: commitment, companion,and competency trust. Commitment trust stemsfrom the contractual agreements between partieswho have an expectation of mutual benefit derivedfrom cooperative relations. These contractual agree-ments may be formal agreements but they can alsobe psychological agreements (Ho et al., 2006).Commitment trust reduces risk and uncertaintybecause it allows those involved to believe thatthose others with whom they are working can betrusted to put in the effort necessary to complete thejoint work and that they will all be fairly rewardedfor the joint endeavor. In project terms, this type oftrust can be described as the trust team membersfeel in the project(s) they are working on and in theorganization’s willingness to provide future pro-jects that will satisfy their career ambitions.Commitment trust is thus based largely on con-textual factors rather than on the emerging inter-personal relationships among the team members.

Competence trust is based on perceptions ofanother’s competence to carry out the tasks thatneed to be performed and is based on an attitude ofrespect for the abilities of the trustee to completetheir share of the job at hand. Competencejudgments can also be driven by contextual cuessuch as the reputation of the institution that theperson works for or the status of the professional ormanagerial group to which they belong. However,while these contextual cues may initially fosterperceptions of competence trust, if the other fails todeliver as expected, such competence trust canquickly deteriorate. In project teams, this type oftrust relates to trust that members feel in thetechnical and organizational abilities of otherproject members.

Companion trust is based on judgments ofgoodwill or personal friendships, resting on amoral foundation that others will behave in away that does not harm but rather promotes thegood, of other members of the network. There is ajoint expectation of honesty and openness and such

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trust is process-based in that it develops over timeas people get to know each other personally anddevelop friendship ties through continuing reci-procal exchange. It has a strong emotional com-ponent and is important for the maintenance ofsocial networks. However, if eventually broken, thistrust is also likely to cause the greatest rift betweenthe parties involved. In project teams, this type oftrust relates to the friendship ties that develop as anoutcome of collaborative work and is related to thefrequency of informal interactions (McAllister,1995). In a virtual team these informal interactionswill typically be limited. Moreover, in a globallydiverse team the heterogeneity of team membersmay make it more difficult to establish trust basedon interactions. When people are interacting withthose who are seen to be like them (or homogenoussocial environments), the collaborative nature ofinteractions can be taken-for-granted. However, ininteractions among heterogeneous actors, the abilityto meet these expectations can be more challenging.

The establishment of such friendship ties, or therelational embeddedness of a group, influences thewillingness of members to share information andknowledge with each other. When there is a lack oftrust, knowledge sharing may be minimal. How-ever, if there is trust built on social relationships,knowledge sharing can go over and above whatmight be required formally. The importance of suchsocial networks for knowledge sharing has beenidentified in the social capital literature (Adler andKwon, 2002). However, spillover effects (Murray,2002) must be recognized since social networks canalso have a negative impact on aspects of knowl-edge sharing, for example in excluding those whoare not part of the friendship group. In other words,the development of strong social networks andcommunity bonds can create boundaries and anenvironment marked by cliques and clannishbehavior. Despite these potential problems, acollective orientation remains essential to thedevelopment of collaborative work.

All three types of trust appear to be crucial toproject team success. The significance of commit-ment trust is recognized in the literature on teammembers’ commitment to project goals (Kanter,1983); the significance of companion trust isdemonstrated by research in the importance ofthe strong bonds between project members (Cam-pion et al., 1993; Guzzo and Shea, 1992) and thesignificance of competence trust is demonstrated byresearch on the importance of having the appro-priate skills and expertize on a project team(Schneider and Northcraft, 1999; Teram, 1999).

These different types of trust also interact witheach other. For example, where competency trust

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does not exist, companion trust can be difficult toestablish. As Rawls and David (2005, p. 494) note:‘anyone who fails to display competence inexpected ways becomes disturbingly Other, deviantand threatening.’ Competency here refers to theability to engage in interactions in a way that meetsnormative expectations. Put another way, it can bedifficult to build complex interactions if one cannotsuccessfully complete even the most routine andritualistic encounters. Garfinkel (1963, 1967)observes that trust and reciprocity must be rootedin situated practices but also noted that the contextand membership categories of the interactants willimpact the form that the reciprocity and trust takes.In other words, trust is rooted in contextual cues aswell as interactions between people. Thus, trust isboth socially derived and contextually based.

Moreover, Newell and Swan (2000) found thatcommitment trust played an important role in thesubsequent evolution of companion and compe-tency trust. These authors distinguished betweenhigh and low commitment trust contexts and foundthat where commitment trust was low, companiontrust and competence trust were more difficult toestablish, often leading to a viscous cycle ofdegeneration, with low commitment trust makingit more difficult to establish companion trust whichin turn influenced negatively perceptions of com-petency trust, further creating problems for anypotential improvement in companion trust.

Trust is, then, both an antecedent to, and a resultof, successful collaboration (Leana and Van BurenIII, 1999, p. 542). In terms of an antecedent, as wehave discussed, commitment trust is stronglyinfluenced by the context of interaction. Compe-tence trust can also initially be based on contextualcues that precede any direct interaction, but willsubsequently evolve, positively or negatively,depending upon the actual interactions, or betterperceptions of the actual interactions. Finally,companion trust is very much an outcome ofsuccessful collaboration, with interactions generat-ing feelings of respect, liking, and shared identity orconversely feelings of disrespect, dislike, andseparate identities.

Considering more specifically the contextualinfluences, in globally distributed project teamspart of the context are the national culture and theorganizational culture that influence commitmenttrust (Zakaria et al., 2004). If there are perceived to besignificant national cultural differences that makesome of the other team members ‘different’ fromoneself, then trust may bemore difficult to establish.Similarly, if the organizational culture is notsupportive of the collaborative teamwork effortthen again trust within the team may be difficult to

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establish or may evolve in a negative rather than apositive way. In the research reported below wefocus on how these two aspects of the context (theorganizational and the institutional cultural con-texts) influenced the evolution (either positively ornegatively) of trust once interactions within theteamwere initiated. More specifically, in this paper,we will explore the problems of developing thedifferent types of trust, upon which reciprocalinteraction and knowledge sharing depends, in aglobally distributed team context.

THE STUDY SITE AND DATAGATHERING PROCESS

Our study site, called GLOBALIS, is the ISorganization of a large firm with its headquartersin Boston, MA and multiple solution centers in theNew England region. GLOBALIS also has solutioncenters in Dallas, Salt Lake City, Dublin and Galwayin Ireland, and Gurgaon, and Bangalore in India.Although GLOBALIS has considerable experiencein establishing geographically distributed solutioncenters and is well aware of industry’s best practicesfor dealing with issues and problems of geographicdispersion, for example, distance and time zonedifferences, cultural differences, loss of communi-cation richness, etc., its leadership is interested ingaining a better understanding of how its workersengage in globally distributed collaborative work.

To provide GLOBALIS management an under-standing of how its global workforce collaborate,3 years ago our team began observing the develop-ment of GLOBALIS’s global delivery process. Forthe past 12 months our research team has beenperforming an ethnographic analysis of four ITprojects using a workplace studies paradigm (seeLuff et al., 2000).

A multi-layered data collection process, thatincluded interviews, site visits, observations ofvideo conference and conference calls, and frequentdiscussions with and presentations to GLOBALISpersonnel regarding the team’s findings, was usedto develop independent verification of our findings.In addition, the project was carried out in aquasi-Participatory Action Research (see Whyte,1990) framework in that it was hoped that thefindings of the project would be beneficial toworkers, management, and the organizations interms of developing better relationships amongdistributed personnel resulting in higher qualitywork and a better global strategy.

Interviews were conducted with personnel at alllevels of the project. These interviews occurred inboth individual and group format and most of the

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interviews happened in person. Each interviewlasted approximately 1 hour in length, and overallover 40 organizational employees were inter-viewed.

The Irish sites were visited in 2003 for 1 week, andagain in 2006 for another week. The Indian siteswere visited over 10 days in 2006. During the courseof the project, the sites in the New England areawere visited intermittently in order to attendmeetings, conduct interviews, and deliver reports.No other sites in the US were visited.

ANALYSIS OF TRUST IN THE CASE

In this section we will apply the triad of commit-ment, companion, and competence trust to analyzethe case in order to understand the impact of contextand workplace dynamics on the building andsustenance of trust in an organizational setting.

Analysis of commitment trust in the case

Commitment trust is the extent to which workers atthe different project sites feel committed to the jointendeavor. To achieve commitment trust GLOBALISworks hard in creating a similar look and feel to itsbuilding at various sites, diffusing its organizationalnorms, values and practices within each site, andcontinually conveying a common message whereworkers are valued irrespective of their location. Inaddition, GLOBALIS introduced three programs onworking effectively across national boundaries.First, GLOBALIS initiated its own internal trainingprogram on how to work across cultures. Second, itcontracted with a consulting firm to provide acultural training program on doing business withIndia (no program on doing business with Irelandwas provided). Third, GLOBALIS purchased sitelicenses for a type of cultural ‘expert system’ thatemployees could access, whichwould provide themwith suggestions and guidelines for interactingwithpeople around the world (along with providingsome background information on countries). Whileparticipation in the programs was not mandatoryfor all workers in the US, it was recommended andstrongly encouraged for certain levels of workers.These trainings were primarily aimed at Americanworkers, with more limited training options beingprovided for Irish and Indian workers.

Impact of cross-cultural training on commitment trustTwo of the authors attended one of the trainingsessions held by the consulting group, and wereprovided with the written materials that accom-

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panied the training. In order to increase thecross-cultural intelligence, the training stressedthe differences between cultures. Although thetrainers pointed out that the national culturedimensions are generalized means and there areindividual differences within any national culture,the basic premises of cross-cultural training is toportray national culture as relatively stable andpredictable. Such formulaic and static way ofnational culture portrayal leads to sophisticatedstereotyping (Chand et al., 2006) and exacerbates an‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ feeling rather than encouraginga collective commitment to the particular projectthey were all working on. In summary, traditionalcross-cultural training works counter to buildingcommitment trust.

Impact of work allocation on commitment trustFrom the perspective of team members in Irelandand India, there was a perception that they wereonly given work that their US colleagues did notwant (i.e., very low level, mundane work) or workthat was problematic in some sense. For example,the first project to be owned by a team in Irelandwasa security project. The researchers were told by teammembers that when they first took the project over,there were significant problems with the project asthe clients were not at all happywith the service thatwas being delivered. In this case the Irish teamnevertheless managed to turn the project aroundand improve customer satisfaction by putting in atremendous effort to build a center of excellencearound security knowledge. It was then assumedthat all future security work would come to Ireland.

However, the COO of the Irish organizationrecalled how he had been dismayed recently whenhe had found that some new security work had beenassigned to a team in a US location, rather than tothe Ireland office. This deepened the sense of‘otherness’ by creating the perception that distrib-uted sites only receive the ‘low hanging fruit’ or‘grunt work’ that American workers did not want.There was the sense among the Irish workers that aslong as work was either not wanted by theAmerican sites, or was in such disarray that itwas a no lose proposition, ownership of projectscould be sent overseas. However, once that workstabilized and was wanted by the American sites, itcould be brought back. This feeling of only beingworthy of low level and low skill work decreasedworker satisfaction and commitment in the offshoresites.

Impact of potential job loss on commitment trustIncreased global competition for jobs also increasedworker unease regarding the stability of their jobs.

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In this climate, GLOBALIS workers in the US sawnew co-workers from other parts of the world as‘threats,’ despite management assurances otherwise.Over the course of 1 year, approximately 3000 jobswere added in India. This growth far outpaced thatof any other satellite office, even though theseoffices had been established for a longer period oftime. With this growth came an increased push forwork to be assigned to the India solution centers.

One strategy used byGLOBALISwas to engage ina PR campaign regarding the virtues of contractingwith the Indian solution centers. Part of thiscampaign involved a day-long seminar on thechallenges and successes associatedwith partneringwith India. At this all-day event that included over300 GLOBALIS US managers, the message that wasgiven was that the company was being forced torelocate globally because of demographic trends inthe US, and in the Northeast US specifically, whichmeant that there was going to be a dire shortage of20–40 year olds in the coming years. They were thusbeing ‘forced’ to move away from the area in orderto ensure a ready supply of labor. Alongside thesedemographic trends, all speakers at the eventpointed to the ‘phenomenal success’ of theiroffshore facilities, especially in India. Success wasmeasured in terms of growth rate and compara-tively very low $ per hour employee costs in India ascompared to the US, rather than in terms of actualproductivity costs, making it impossible to argueagainst the success of the off-shoring strategy. Themessage to the US employees was, therefore,clear—we are being forced to move jobs offshore,and this may include your job if we have to moveyour part of the organization because of limitedlabor supply here (i.e., in the US) and opportunitiesthere (i.e., in India).

The perceived loss of permanence among USworkers meant they feared that they may not be apart of the organization for the long-term. Thisimpacted their commitment to collaboration withtheir Irish and Indian colleagues. This lack ofcommitment to collaborative work was manifestedin attempts to protect their own knowledge fromtheir overseas colleagues; that is, in their attempts toensure that their knowledge stayed with them sothat their jobs could not be offshored. This tensionbetween the US team members wanting to keepespecially the ‘good’ jobs and the Irish and Indianteam members wanting to have allocated someof the ‘good’ jobs to them meant that commitmenttrust was low across the teams. The national culturetraining, given only to US employees, exacerbatedrather than ameliorated this low commitment trust,exaggerating differences and therefore perpetuat-ing an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality.

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Thus, commitment trust when examined as aproperty of situated contexts was very weak atGLOBALIS. For the onshore workers it was difficultfor them to be truly committed to knowledgesharing because of fear that this might threaten theirown jobs in the future and for the offshore workersit was difficult for them to be truly committedbecause the types of work they were being assignedwas not of the quality that would help them todevelop their careers.

Analysis of companion trust in the case

For companion trust to form there needs to be astrong feeling of community across a project team.By a community we mean it shares a commoncommitment and identity that is demonstratedthrough shared norms and social exchanges inwhich all of these elements can be displayed.Therefore, a key question to explore is whether theteam members in both India and Ireland feelthemselves to be part of the GLOBALIS com-munity? We observed that the offshore workersviewed their onshore counterparts in the US asclient rather than partner.

When we explored this issue we came across twosituations that suggest why the offshore staff do notfeel they are treated as equally as onshore employ-ees of GLOBALIS. First, US project team-matesoften send emails requesting particular pieces ofwork to be done in a tone that is clearly morecontractual than collaborative. Second, evaluationof team member performance is one-way. USproject team members evaluate the performanceof their Indian and Irish team-mates but notvice-versa. Such procedural insensitivity and beha-vioral norms create an ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ mentalityand a barrier to the development of companion trustacross the distributed team. Precisely because of this‘Us/Them’mentality there was very little sharing ofsocial information that provides the basis ofcompanion trust. The lack of development of asocial network, due to the absence of companiontrust, also interrupted the sharing of knowledgebecause people did not knowwho they might speakto about a particular issue they had, or if they knewwho this could be, they did not feel comfortableinstigating a conversation, as illustrated in thefollowing two examples.

The first example was provided by one of theinterviewees in Ireland who recounted the story ofhow a newmember had been added to the project inIndia. This Indian team member needed someinformation to complete part of his assignment. Hehad no idea whom to ask for this information andbecause he saw his US colleagues as client he was

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very reluctant to contact them for help. Instead, hekept asking his Irish colleague because he identifiedmore with this individual as not being part of theclient directly. Another example involves theinstructions given to an Indian team beingmanagedfrom a site in the US. The project manager told hisIndian workers ‘Call me at anytime if anythinghappens.’ To an inexperienced and uncertain teammember, such instructions are extremely vague,with no concrete sense of what constitutes ‘anythinghappens.’ Also, while ‘anytime’ seems to denote theperson can be contacted at any moment in a day,whether a person can be awoken from a sleep, forinstance, is dependent on the severity of the‘anything’ that ‘happened.’ Thus, determinationsof major and minor ‘anythings’ must be made suchthat one can feel it is appropriate to call at anytime.When the fact that there is little trust between theworkers is factored in, this can be an extremelydifficult exercise for offshore personnel.

While we have already described how thecultural training exaggerated difference, our obser-vations suggest that in fact it was age differencesbetween the primary and distributed sites that werean important barrier to the establishment ofcompanion trust. The Indian and Irish teammembers were generally a lot younger and withsignificantly less experience compared to their UScolleagues. This made it more difficult to establishcommon interests that can be the foundation ofcompanion trust. While age was perhaps the mostimportant factor contributing to a breakdown ofrapport and relationship development, it typicallywas overlooked because the distributed teammembers rarely, if ever, had a chance to physicallysee one another. More typically, national culturedifferences were often given as the most disruptivefactor in building social relationships and trust.However, we found that actual differences in socialbehaviors (based on national boundaries) were notthe issue. Rather, it was the perception of differencethat created the barriers. Therefore, any element orcharacteristic that establishes boundaries betweengroups will ultimately disrupt the formation ofcompanion trust.

Analysis of competence trust in the case

Competence trust refers to having trust that ones’team member is competent and will complete thework that they have agreed. Competence trust candevelop quickly based on signs of competency suchas qualifications or previous job experiences(Meyerson et al., 1996). However, competence trustcan quickly deteriorate if actual competency is notdemonstrated on the project. Also important in this

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is how perceptions of a group can affect theevaluation of their work. For instance, Taylor andJaggi (1974) found that in-group members evalu-ated the same behaviors very differently whencommitted by fellow in-group members or byout-group members. Therefore, competency is notjust about how well a job is done; it is about howwell a job is perceived to be done as well.

The US interviewees often complained about thequality and timing of the work produced by theirIrish or Indian team colleagues, suggesting a lack ofcompetence trust. However, given the interdepen-dency between team members, the ability foroffshore teammembers to demonstrate competencewas very dependent on finding the onshore personwho had the necessary information that wouldallow the offshore worker to complete their part ofthe task and once this person was identified gettinghim/her to actually share their knowledge.We havealready described how a lack of companion trustmade it difficult to identify who had relevantknowledge or, if known, to actually establishcontact. However, even if the offshore worker knewwho to contact and initiated that contact, this wasnot always successful. For example, one intervieweerecounted the example of how he needed to getinformation from a particular team member in theUSA but how this person would not answer hisemail, respond to his IMs, or answer his phone calls.The Irish employee developed an interestingstrategy to circumvent this obstacle. Rather thancall the person he needed directly, he would contactanother American in the same office that he knewwell. He would then have this person route his callto the target individual so the team member he wastrying to get hold of would then not know that thephone call was coming from Ireland andwould pickup!

The result of these kinds of problems of gettinginformation and knowledge from onshore teammembers (whowere for themost part the experts onthe systems) was that the offshore team memberwas often perceived not to have done a good job onthe tasks assigned, thereby reducing competencetrust. The example illustrates how competencetrust may be threatened not by a lack of actualability, but by the problems of demonstratingcompetency in a context where knowledge sharingis problematic.

The offshore centers in India attempted to counterthis lack of competence trust by seeking CMMLevel V certification. By doing so, the Indianmanagers and employees believed that they wouldbe seen as highly competent and able. However,American (and in this case also Irish) workers didnot see CMM certification as a relevant display of

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competency. Rather, they viewed it as a rigidstructure that could negatively impact their abilityto complete work on an ad hoc basis. Thus, thatwhich was hoped to build competency couldultimately have the opposite effect.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

In this section we will discuss the implications ofour analysis. The first thing to keep in mind is thatGLOBALIS is a leading organization in its industrysector and is committed to implementing the bestpractices associated with offshoring and globalsoftware development. As a consequence, GLOBA-LIS organization policies and practices serve asscaffolding of the environment in which globalwork takes place. Examples of this environment are:(1) Top management’s clear message to all stake-holders that GLOBALIS is a global company, (2)Establishing captive offshore centers instead ofbuilding partnerships with offshore vendors, (3)Moving work to India and Ireland is not a short-term cost-cutting endeavor but a strategic move tomake GLOBALIS more competitive, (4) Workamong sites will be allocated based on cost, quality,and time to market needs of the customer, (5)Ensuring organizational values and norms arediffused across sites, (6) Standardizing and syn-chronizing the work technologies across sites, (7)Allocating ‘sufficient’ travel budget for knowledgetransfer and face-to-face meetings between onshoreand offshore managers, (8) Onshore managersplaying a major role in the hiring and retention ofoffshore managers and workers, (9) Implementingmatured project management practices across sites,and (10) Incorporating cross-cultural training andglobal leadership seminars for itsmanagement staff.

Our analysis has shown that these structuralassurances are not sufficient for developing trustingbeliefs among the work force. There are othersituational factors such as the demographic differ-ences among the onshore and offshore workers, theperception that this global development will resultin loss of jobs of onshore workers, and the client/vendor orientation among the onshore and offshoresites that are impacting the building and fostering oftrust. Specifically, our data confirm that trust isdifficult to establish in a globally distributed projectteam, making knowledge sharing problematic(Jarvenpaa et al., 1998) and so having a knock-oneffect on team performance, especially where theteam is trying to operate in a reciprocally inter-dependent way (Thompson, 1967). The onshoreworkers felt threatened by the sudden and huge

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growth in the offshore organization so that theytried to protect the more strategic work to ensurethat theymaintained power (and jobs). This, in turn,reduced the commitment of the offshore workerswho saw limited opportunities for career develop-ment given that the work that they were allocatedtended to be non-strategic and/or low level work. Inthis context of low commitment trust, the tendencywas to operate with a vendor/client orientation,which mitigated against the development of com-panion trust. Interactions were kept at a ‘pro-fessional’ level, thus reducing the development ofsocial bonds (Adler and Kwon, 2002). This made itdifficult for the offshore workers to either identifywho might have knowledge that they neededor, even if known, to get the onshore worker toprovide them with that knowledge. As a result,offshore workers often did not meet deadlines orproduce the quality of work that they might havebeen able to with better knowledge sharingcooperation. The end result was a reduction incompetence trust between the onshore and offshoreteam members.

The attempts by the company to encourage betterunderstanding across the globally distributed teamsthrough a cultural training program actually madethe situation worse. This cultural training allowedthe onshore workers to interpret the work of theirIndian colleagues as a reflection of their cultural‘differences’ (Rawls and David, 2005), which wereinvariably expressed as shortcomings. For example,lack of initiative (a national cultural trait they hadlearned about) was seen as the reason for the Indianteam not being more proactive in asserting theirviews, rather than as a product of the situation inwhich theywere new to the organization, new to theindustry, and saw themselves as vendors ratherthan partners. Furthermore, the lack of companiontrust and commitment trust limited the potential forIndian workers to take the initiative. Rather thanbeing able to see these situational factors, theAmerican managers viewed everything through acultural lens of difference.

Our interviewees provided a few exampleswhereproblems of trusting beliefs were reduced whenopportunities were provided for some face-to-faceinteraction. That is, when given the chance to meet,they had developed relationships rather quickly aslong as some common ground could be found. Oneworker at an Indian site who had been given theopportunity to travel to the US for training told ushow he had become very friendly with one of the USworkers when they discovered, by accident, thatthey shared a common taste for music. As indicatedearlier, differences between the onshore and off-shore workers in terms of demographics sometimes

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made this finding of common ground more difficultand thus impeded the development of more socialcohesion, especially when an opportunity forface-to-face interaction was provided.

The organization instituted a number of policiesand recommendations to try to establish bettercollaborative relationships among its distributedsites. Often, technology figured prominently inthese attempts. For instance, at the beginning of aproject, there might be a video conference wherepeople could introduce themselves. Also, theremight be some virtual cultural exchanges involvingrecognition of national holidays. Cultural trainingswere also meant to increase cultural sensitivity andtolerance of difference. Shared organizational pro-cesses and similar physical structures also werebuilt to establish a common culture. Finally, whiletravel was limited due to cost and visa factors, it wasseen as a vital strategy in building relationships andtrust. However, our analysis showed that despitethese institutional trust-building activities, con-siderable distrust is being manifested in practice.

Our view is that the objective of institutional trustbuilding is to build trust based on professional rolesrather than specific individual personalities orpersonal relationships. In other words, the pro-fessional roles specify the manner in which thepersons are to engage with one another. Forinstance, a patient may trust that a doctor canperform medical acts because the person is in fact adoctor, and that the way in which doctor–patientinteraction plays out is based on the respective rolesof the interactants. This trust is not built over time,but established by virtue of the setting and thepersons’ understanding and acceptance of theirroles. Furthermore, since the focus of institutionaltrust is more on initial trust as opposed to atime-based process that gradually evolves, weconclude that the goal of institutional trust is tobuild swift trust (Meyerson et al., 1996), a conceptproposed to explain the paradoxical trustingbehavior exhibited by members of temporarysystems. It is a unique form of collective perceptionsrather than scaled-down trust.

This type of trust is different from a trust built onrepeated encounters whereby interactants have theopportunity to evolve from a relationship based onswift trust. This allows people to form relationshipsbeyond roles and establish a different sense of socialsolidarity rooted in personalities and/or common-alities. This not only takes time, but also acommitment to do so. Organizational policies infact can interfere with this process by proclaimingthat you should not query into the lives of yourco-workers, you should not take time away fromwork-talk to engage in social-talk, or that members

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of certain cultures have a disdain for personalinformation exchanges.

Since trust is the glue for effective globalcollaboration, what actions can management taketo build and to foster trust? Our analysissuggests two ways. One is to address the situationalfactors that ferment distrust, and the other is toimplement trust-building actions that exploit theswift trust to build a trusting environment.Rather than approaching this problem throughtechnology and process standardization, ‘compa-nies need to recognize that knowledge sharing andboundary penetration are quintessentially humanacts’ (Newell et al., 2001, p. 76) and in particular thatthey rely on trust being established between theproject team members. Especially in the softwaredevelopment arena knowledge sharing is para-mount. People often need to get information fromothers and cooperate with others. In this knowledgeseeking process, although there are many knowl-edge management software and knowledge bases,people are much more likely to turn to their friendsat work for help (Borgatti and Cross, 2003; Crossand Cummings, 2004). During the knowledgetransfer process, friendship ties are even morehelpful. It is up to the knowledge provider howmuch information to provide and how soon toprovide this information. When the knowledgeseeker and provider are friends, knowledge will betransferred more successfully. In summary, devel-oping a global workforce strategy that recognizesthese tensions among both the onshore and offshoreemployees and so focuses on nurturing an organ-izational culture that demonstrates equal commit-ment to all employees is likely to be a significantenabler of global project teamwork. Thus ourconclusion is that organizations need to proactivelywork to build personal relationships to move froman Us/Them perspective to a You/I relationship,which is the antecedent to the development of a‘We’ community.

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