TRUST, FAULTLINES AND DISTRIBUTED TEAMS

Abstract

Building trust often requires interpersonal contract, and given the distributed nature of many modern organizational teams, the presence of the supervisor is not constantly possible. This can affect trust building in different parts of the team and lead to faultlines between the teams. The location of the supervisor defines some of the means of communication available between them and the employees, and this can affect the interaction between them. The purpose of the study was to find if the presence of the supervisor affected trust, building of faultlines or work engagement, as well as to see how trust correlated with them. The quantitive study, conducted in the case company, found that the location of the supervisor was not relevant, but trust towards the supervisor had significant positive correlation with almost all variables. The implications are that use of virtual communication tools can help alleviate the lack of physical presence with communication.