A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Trust Building and Maintenance in Virtual Organizations

摘要

The issue of trust development in traditional organizations has been widely discussed in the academic literature for several years. Recently, scholars have also studied trust development in temporary groups and have noted some fundamental differences between the manner in which trust develops in traditional organizations and the manner in which it develops in temporary groups. Virtual organizations are a new type of organization characterized by traits of both traditional organizations and temporary groups. This paper integrates the literature on trust in virtual organizations and the perspectives of trust development in both traditional organizations and temporary groups to develop a process-based framework which facilitates the understanding of trust development in the virtual organization setting.