Global Virtual Teams. How the Usage of New Information and Communication Technologies can Enhance Trust in Global Virtual Teams

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - Miscellaneous grade: 13 Fresenius University of Applied Sciences Hamburg language: English abstract: Globalization flexibilization decentralization and networking are all buzzwords that change our workplaces into work 4.0. Deloitte's recent Global Human Capital Trends Surveys from 2016 and 2018 describe the trends of self-organized networks and hyper-connected workplaces as well as digital HR and recommends that organizations have to redesign their work environment with HR as creator to facilitate collaboration across company boundaries.Global virtual teams (hereafter: GVTs) are one way to respond to those trends and stay competitive. Several surveys indicate how ubiquitous global virtual teamwork is. A survey from 2016 included 1372 respondents from 80 countries. 85% of those indicated that they already worked in GVTs. To be successful these teams depend on diverse factors as can be seen in figure 1 (not included in this text).One of the main difference between GVTs and co-located teams is the interaction through information and communication technologies (hereafter: ICTs). The most important success factor yet bigg est challenge for those teams is to develop mutual trust. This paper will connect both success factors to find out how trust can be built through the appropriate usage of cutting-edge ICTs. How to build trust is one of the most researched topics in the GVT literature. In addition scholars already included trust-formation through communication in their research. However they have not broadened their research to emerging ICTs like Web 2.0 or virtual rooms yet. Scholars annotate critically that even though those technologies are already used in practice research appears not to be keeping up with practice. Regarding 3D virtual environments like virtual rooms only five articles were found by Gilson et al. and the content was rather generic. Additional