Effect of Social Media on Trust in Virtual Project Teams of Construction Sector in Middle East

Abstract

Social media has greatly affected the way the virtual teams in construction sector of UAE collaborate and share information among each other. The social media is needed to support synchronicity, a shared pattern of coordinated behavior among individuals as they work together. Research shows that, although computer-supported collaborative work has increased, many distributed virtual teams are facing a number of issues in managing and controlling the teams which leads to distrust among the team members. Trust among virtual team members is considered to be one of the primary concerns that affect the performance of virtual teams in Construction Sector. This paper is a result of literature review of around 150 papers which dealt with positive and negative effect of social media interactions on trust among virtual team members. Through Literature review, it was found that conflict and cohesion within the team members greatly affects the role of communication on trust among virtual project team members.

Challenges negating virtual construction project team performance in the Middle East

“…Zuofa and Ochieng (2021) opined that remote working and virtual teams may still pose newer challenges for delivering projects. Construction project teams increasingly utilise virtual project teams to deliver projects (Kaur, 2017;Ramalingam et al, 2014). Due to the pressure from globalisation, it is becoming necessary for construction organisations to adopt virtual project teams to deal with the challenges of the contemporary business environment (Chen and Messner, 2010).…”

“…Zuofa and Ochieng (2021) opined that remote working and virtual teams may still pose newer challenges for delivering projects. Construction project teams increasingly utilise virtual project teams to deliver projects (Kaur, 2017; Ramalingam et al. , 2014).…”

“…As a result, the construction industry has remained in need of creating knowledge to supply the industry with essential information on the challenges faced in deploying virtual project teams on construction projects (Hosseini and Chileshe, 2013). There are challenges such as difficulty in setting up the virtual project teams and insufficient guidelines for managing virtual project teams in the construction sector of the Middle East (Kaur et al, 2015). Therefore, the companies fear implementing virtual project teams, even though globalisation and changing customer needs require teams to increase the performance of the projects.…”

Modeling the factors determining a virtual team’s decision-making

“…Since the Middle East is multicultural, engaging people from all backgrounds and nations in various projects, it is crucial to comprehend the phenomena of these groups that relate across cultural boundaries. The inability of VTs to successfully bridge the three barriers, namely, geographic time zones, distance, and cultural differences, has been proven to be closely connected to their failure (Kaur et al 2016). Thus, it is impossible to overstate the importance of managing virtual teams in the Middle East (Topaloglu & Anac, 2021).…”

“…Numerous global corporations have chosen to locate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), drawn on the country's extensive growth plan (Kaur, Arif & Akre 2016). Several studies have been carried out on the challenges faced by globally distributed virtual teams and possible solutions, but there have been relatively few studies that focus on VTs in the Middle East, particularly on VT decisionmaking (Al Kaabi, Sidek & Mosali, 2022).…”