Trust and surprise in distributed teams: towards an understanding of expectations and adaptations

  • Authors:

  • Ban Al-Ani;Erik Trainer;David Redmiles;Erik Simmons

  • Affiliations:

  • University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA;University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA;University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA;Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, California, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Intercultural Collaboration
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Trust can be defined in terms of one party's expectations of another, and the former's willingness to be vulnerable based on those expectations. Surprise results from a failure to meet expectations, which can influence trust. We conducted an empirical study of surprises stemming from cultural differences in distributed teams and their influence on trust. Our study findings provide two primary contributions. First, we find that trust judgments in culturally diverse teams are made from accumulated experiences that involve a sequence of cultural surprise, attribution, formulation of new expectations, and the application of adaptations in new situations. Second, we document adaptations that individuals develop to avoid future surprises and which ultimately helped them to improve their sense of trust towards others. In general, our findings contribute to the existing body of work by providing evidence of how people attribute specific cultural surprises, the impact on their sense of trust and adaptations.