Trust in teams: A taxonomy of perceived trustworthiness factors and risk-taking behaviors in face-to-face and virtual teams

Abstract

Do we really need personal meetings to develop trust within teams? Which factors impact trust emergence within face-to-face and virtual teams? How do high-trust teams interact compared with teams with low team trust? Trust is seen as an important predictor of behavior in teams. However, the psychological mechanisms linking team trust to both its antecedents and its behavioral consequences are not well understood. The present study introduces a new taxonomy of team trust mechanisms by integrating results from a qualitative interview study with prior theoretical and empirical research on team trust. We conducted exploratory interviews based on the critical incident technique with 55 professionals who had substantial teamwork experience. Altogether, 776 behavioral items were collected stemming from 127 team events that were perceived as critical for the emergence of trust in teams. A content analysis revealed five main categories of perceived trustworthiness factors in teams as antecedents of team trust and three main categories of risk-taking behaviors as behavioral consequences in teams. The findings contribute to a better understanding of team trust emergence and related behaviors in teams. Future research should validate the derived taxonomy of team trust with quantitative data.