The role of leadership in building trust in multilingual virtual teams
Leppäkoski, Milka (2021)
2021
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2021090917629
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2021090917629
Tiivistelmä
The purpose of this master’s thesis is to study the impact of trust on the performance of an international virtual team and in particular the role of project manager in building trust between team members. International virtual teams are very common in organizations today. Research questions are answered by existing theories presented in the scientific literature, as well as by analyzing the open answers of a pre-survey. The theoretical framework of the thesis deals with virtual team trust building and the impact of project manager actions on it. The purpose of the work was also to find out, with the help of a pre-prepared survey, how the building of trust in a virtual team can be promoted.
The study involved 104 people from different fields who have worked in international virtual teams. The survey was conducted with an online questionnaire in both Finnish and English. The pre-survey included multiple-choice questions and two open-ended questions regarding the building of trust in virtual teams, and these answers are analyzed in this thesis.
The results of the study reveal the central role of the supervisor in building trust in virtual teams and the challenges of leadership when building trust in a virtual work environment. The results show that trust building is influenced by many different things and that people’s different background variables influence the factors they perceive as important in building trust and which factors increase trust in a virtual team. According to the study, the biggest contributors to trust building were open discussion and consideration of others, while the challenge of building trust in a multilingual virtual team is virtuality and facelessness in human communication itself, where gestures and tone of voice affect how another team member’s words are interpreted. The project manager has an important role to play in creating an open discussion and choosing the right kind of communication methods, as well as managing cultural differences so that trust can be built.
The study involved 104 people from different fields who have worked in international virtual teams. The survey was conducted with an online questionnaire in both Finnish and English. The pre-survey included multiple-choice questions and two open-ended questions regarding the building of trust in virtual teams, and these answers are analyzed in this thesis.
The results of the study reveal the central role of the supervisor in building trust in virtual teams and the challenges of leadership when building trust in a virtual work environment. The results show that trust building is influenced by many different things and that people’s different background variables influence the factors they perceive as important in building trust and which factors increase trust in a virtual team. According to the study, the biggest contributors to trust building were open discussion and consideration of others, while the challenge of building trust in a multilingual virtual team is virtuality and facelessness in human communication itself, where gestures and tone of voice affect how another team member’s words are interpreted. The project manager has an important role to play in creating an open discussion and choosing the right kind of communication methods, as well as managing cultural differences so that trust can be built.