Trust and Social Networking Behaviors in Virtual and Face-to-Face Teams

Presenter Information

Lauren Stelten, Minnesota State University, Mankato

Location

CSU 201

Start Date

5-4-2010 10:00 AM

End Date

5-4-2010 12:00 PM

Student's Major

Psychology

Student's College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Mentor's Name

Andrea Lassiter

Mentor's Department

Psychology

Mentor's College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Description

Today organizations use a variety of types of teams to accomplish more work than individuals can alone. Work teams may vary in the extent to which they rely on virtual work. More specially, some team members are geographically dispersed and never see each other face-to-face, while others work in the same office space. Researchers have recently been examining the role of trust and its influence on team effectiveness.

However, little empirical research has focused on the role that social networking plays in virtual team effectiveness. Because individuals are using social networking tools more in both work and non-work aspects of their lives, we examined what role it plays in helping virtual teams be more effective. Given what is known about virtual teams and social networking, it was hypothesized that those individuals who are more involved with social networking (i.e., Facebook, Linkedin, etc) will feel more comfortable and be more effective at working in virtual teams. As the level of comfort in electronic environments increases, their trust level of virtual team members should also increase. Results of this study will add to what is known about social networking and virtual team effectiveness.