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Ad hoc global virtual teams are associated with swift trust – a unique form of trust in temporary systems. Cognitive components of swift trust render it fragile and in need of reinforcement and calibration by actions. Action components of swift trust are undertheorized as are the links to team performance. We elaborate on the normative action processes of swift trust and their relationship to performance, and then report results from a longitudinal quasi-experimental study of 68 temporary virtual teams with no face-to-face interaction. Results provide support for our theory about how the normative action processes involve setting and monitoring performance norms that are supported by early trusting beliefs and that increase late trusting beliefs and consequently team performance in virtual teams.

Building on prior research on distributed teams that has identified physical and temporal distance as impediments to collaboration and relationship development, this paper explores how and why we treat geographically distant others differently from those who are proximal. According to construal level theory, physically-or temporally-distant events or objects are more psychologically distant and are more likely to be described in terms of their more general characteristics, while views of more proximal events or objects will be more detailed and nuanced. We extend construal level theory to the distributed team context by advancing propositions about how group members perceive and evaluate distant others in contrast to proximal others. By comparing to alternative computermediated communication and social psychological theories that have been applied to this phenomenon, we show that construal level theory offers parsimonious explanations as well as novel predictions about how and why we perceive and evaluate distant others differently. The paper then considers theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of construal level theory for distributed teams and other virtual settings.Extending construal level theory 3 Although these theories provide insights into the perception and evaluation of geographicallydistant others in distributed teams, we suggest such effects are driven by a fundamental cognitive difference in how individuals view distant and proximal stimuli of any sort (including people). EXTENDING CONSTRUAL LEVEL THEORY TO DISTRIBUTED TEAMS: PERCEPTION AND EVALUATION OF DISTANT OTHERSConstrual level theory proposes that individuals mentally construe events, objects or people that are psychologically near in terms of low-level, detailed and contextualized features, whereas they construe distant events, objects or people in terms of high-level, abstract and stable characteristics (Liberman & Trope 1998;Trope, Liberman & Wakslak 2007). In this paper, we extend construal level theory to parsimoniously explain phenomena observed in prior research on distributed teams.We show how this single theory can account for disparate observations and allow us to predict effects that have not been systematically anticipated.In the following sections, we review prior research and theory on construal level theory; offer predictions about the perception and evaluation of geographically-distant others in the context of distributed teams; discuss alternative explanations to these predictions; and examine the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of construal level theory for the distributed team context. Construal Level TheoryConstrual level theory explains the connection between distance and levels of abstraction that people make in everyday cognition, such as perception of a distant event or evaluation of a new product ). In their original formulation, Liberman and Trope (1998) created and tested a theory of temporal construal in which distant future situations are construed at a higher leve...

Globalization and technological advances are driving organizations to extend the boundaries of new product development (NPD) teams from traditional colocated settings to dispersed or virtual settings. Virtual NPD teams have a wide array of information and communication technologies (ICTs) at their disposal. ICTs allow team members to communicate and collaborate as they cope with the opportunities and challenges of cross-boundary work. The purpose of this paper is to explore ICT use by members of virtual NPD teams. This study presents an exploratory test and integration of two competing perspectives of media use in virtual teams: media capacity theories and social dynamic media theories. Specifically, this paper examines the role of task type, organizational context, and ICT type as critical contingency variables affecting ICT use. It also examines how different patterns of ICT use relate to individual perceptions of team performance. The findings from this study of 184 members of virtual NPD teams in three global firms suggest that communication via ICTs in virtual NPD teams is contingent on a range of factors.