Swift Trust and Sensemaking in Fast Response Virtual Teams

ABSTRACT

Fast-response virtual teams (FRVTs) have been developed as a response to emergent challenges faced by organizations that need to be addressed urgently. Even though FRVTs offer enormous potential in terms of their benefits, their success is not guaranteed. When used, the need for high performing FRVTs has become critical for organizational success. However, there is a lack of detailed understanding of how sensemaking can potentially influence FRVT performance. Drawing on social exchange theory, we identify swift trust as a potential antecedent of sensemaking. In this paper, we report the results of a study that examined the effects of swift trust on sensemaking and the effects of sensemaking on team performance in FRVTs. The study included 20 FRVTs and 80 team participants. Analysis of data shows that FRVTs’ swift trust is positively correlated with all three dimensions of sensemaking and only the linguistic and conative development aspects of sensemaking affects FRVT performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Sensemaking
• time pressure
• virtual team
• swift trust
• virtual collaboration

Declaration of ethical statement

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards stated in the Declaration of Helsinki. The study was approved by the institutional review board of the School of Information Technology & Management, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China. All the participants in the study have provided appropriate informed consent through WeChat, an online instant communication tool in China.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no potential conflicts of interest.

Notes

¹ WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. WeChat moments can be seen as an online social community where users can share anything in their lives with their friends.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71501044), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in UIBE (CXTD10-06) awarded to Dr. Xiaodan Yu.