ORCID

Abstract

The incidence of Virtual Teams (VTs) within organisations had been steadily increasing prior to the Covid19 pandemic. Then, almost overnight, VTs became the default team type across the globe, with high levels of adoption forecasted to continue. Trust has been identified as essential for VT success, enabling effective relationships between members and between members and leaders. However, the majority of research on virtual trust development has been conducted at the team member level, often within laboratory settings; there being limited field research into leader-member dyads, in particular research capturing both leader and member perspectives. Drawing on 40 in-depth interviews with leaders and members working for global technology companies across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) the question ‘how does virtual leader-member trust develop?’ is addressed and a framework offered. Thematic analysis reveals three dominant behaviours of openness, reliability, and support influencing trust in virtual leader-member dyads. The findings contribute to the understanding of virtual leader-member trust at a time when organisations need to create the conditions for effective virtual working.

Keywords

trust, leader-member trust, virtual teams, virtual leadership

Publication Date

2022-03-10

Event

FINT Conference

First Page

1

Last Page

17

Deposit Date

2026-09-18

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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