Trust in International teams: cultural, spatial, and organizational issues.

• Author: Schilcher, Christian
• Position: Report

1. INTRODUCTION

   This paper deals with international cooperation projects within one or between several companies in the automotive engineering sector. Our aim is to show that building trustful and effective relationships within international and inter-organizational cooperations, depends on a few more factors than just the cultural aspect. This paper represents theoretical implications as well as empirical findings from three case studies conducted in the joint research project 'TRUST-Teamwork in cross-company cooperations.

   The research project is financed by the BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) and the ESF (European Social Fund). TRUST project partners are Technical University Darmstadt (Institute of Sociology and the Department of Computer Integrated Design), Fraunhofer-Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO Stuttgart, Institute for Social Science Research (ISF) Munich and several industrial partners. The research project will operate for a 3-year period and was launched in 2009. We conducted 44 qualitative interviews of 12 case studies in 11 automotive companies. The interviews were semi-structured and took 60-90 minutes. Additionally a standardized online-survey was launched which is currently in the process of being analyzed and summarized.

   In the emerging global ICT-based working environments, cooperating efficiently in and across organizational borders is a vital factor for a company's economic success. Trust within teams can be regarded as one key factor for cooperation and information exchange in such inter-organizational projects. Jarvenpaa et al. (2004) show, that trust evokes sentiments and affects task performance in ICT-enabled relationships. As a result, trust in intercultural constellations has to be built as well as maintained. Thus, trust has become one of the challenging antecedents as it plays a decisive role for a project's success. Jarvenpaa et al. (1998) also mention that trust is crucial for any type of team work, especially in globally spread, virtual teams. Generating trust in global teams successfully and permanently, depends on the individual personality (Frost et al., 1978), the settings and/or the institutional phenomenon (Lewis and Weigert, 1985), cross cultural issues (Farris et al., 1973) as well as on the terms of interpersonal relationships (Mayer et al., 1995; Deutsch, 1958). According to the considerations of Jameson (2007), building trust also relies on the understanding of individual cultural identities.

   Our aim is to show that efficient cooperation is closely connected with a trustful relationship among the people working together in cooperative projects and that the influencing factors reach beyond national identities and stereotypes. The examples which we shall represent in this paper, were drawn from case studies conducted in our research project. The project TRUST seeks to identify parameters that have an effect on enhancing or reducing trust in collaborations in order to optimize the project's success. Before elaborating on details from the case studies, it is necessary to discuss and define the central concepts of trust and culture--especially cultural identity. At the end of the article, we will present a tool which has been developed in the course of our research. It helps to manage trust in cooperation projects and it can be useful for managers as well as team members as a self-diagnosis tool.

2. TRUST, CULTURAL IDENTITES, AND FAMILIARTIY

   Since the 1980's, research activities on trust have increased. Studies on trust under specific conditions were conducted in selected areas, for example, in the fields of corporate communications (Slaby and Urban, 2002; Gerling and Obermeier, 1995), face-to-face cooperation in exchange situations (Kollock, 1994), or in the context of physician-patient relationships (Koller and Lorenz, 1997). All these research activities--as for example the studies on organizational trust (Kramer, 2006)--are relevant for the issue of trust in inter-organizational product development cooperation. Our understanding of trust is mainly based on Luhmann's (1979) perceptions of trust. From this perspective, trust is understood as a "risky advance concession". Luhmann argues, that in sophisticated situations, trust reduces complexity and thereby enables player's actions. Collaboration among different players occurs in a field which is characterized both by candidness and risk. Collaboration can only succeed if all players understand how to cope under conditions of insecurity, unpredictability and nescience.

   Trust has an economic impact. If there exists a high level of trust among cooperation partners, the speed of development processes can be increased, whereas costs may decrease. Trust-related behavior can bridge information gaps and thus, save time. Mutual trust provides the possibility to reduce extensive processes of controlling and regulation, transaction costs, and trust allows to enhance the creativity and stability of cooperation (Schewe 2008; Sprenger 2007). Despite all these advantages, trust can still be violated and mistrust may arise. For example: One player takes personal advantages at the expense of another player. The player who acts trustfully as well as the cooperation, are both being harmed. Such a situation may end up to an extent, where the person who trusted in the other is disappointed, that trust in the cooperation partner gets lost, and going forward, that the parties involved become suspicious of one another.

   From the empirical research we gained a very important insight: One crucial and fundamental challenge for a trust-based cooperation lies in the coordination of interests among cooperation partners. On a personal level, this may occur in the form of problems concerning different loyalties. Working together successfully (e.g. developing together innovatively as an international and/and inter-organizational team) requires all the different cooperation partners' commitment. And also it is necessary for them to focus on joint objectives and to recognize individual advantages, that derive from the cooperation. The interests of everyone involved (companies and persons) need to be considered and negotiated. However, even if the inter-organizational teamwork proceeds effectively, there always remains a certain loyalty toward each partner's parent company. If the situation ends up in a breach of trust, for instance, due to violation of intellectual property rights, this can lead to an erosion of a collaboration between companies or at least impede them. In some cases, collaboration projects become unrealizable.

   Another basic aspect in the process of building trust in the context of global inter-organizational teams, is the matter of knowing each other or being familiar among colleagues and cooperation partners. Establishing an atmosphere of familiarity, where people have the chance to get to know each other personally, is an essential precaution, when it comes to building trust. Trust can barely be built--nor strengthened--in an anonymous and foreign atmosphere, such as where cooperation partners appear to be strangers towards one another. Nevertheless, there are many different settings in which one person appears strange or unfamiliar toward the other: E.g. people may appear as strangers because they have never met before personally, therefore they never had the chance to introduce themselves, and e.g. exchange names. Also, having different occupational qualifications, leads different professionals to different points of view. They might tend to solve problems in completely different ways. These differences might then be a reason for appearing strange towards one another. Very often, language differences and/or differing cultural backgrounds enhance unfamiliarity between persons or groups of persons...