A cross‐disciplinary literature review: Examining trust on virtual teams

Effective and efficient teams communicate, collaborate, and perform, even if these teams are not co‐located. Although much is known about enabling effectiveness on face‐to‐face teams, considerably less is known about similarly enabling effectiveness on virtual teams. Yet the use of virtual teams is common and will likely become more commonplace as organizations continue to update and use increasingly sophisticated technology. Cohort and individual trust between team members is a significant component on most effective teams, virtual or face‐to‐face. This paper examines research on virtual teams and trust across disciplines, including management, e‐learning, business communication, decision making, human resource management, psychology, and IT, to identify major characteristics that increase our knowledge of how to establish and maintain trust in the virtual environment and on virtual teams.