research-article

Globally distributed system developers: their trust expectations and processes

Authors:

Matthew J. Bietz,

Benjamin Koehne,

Sabrina Marczak,

David Redmiles,

Rafael PrikladnickiAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '13: Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work

Pages 563 - 574

https://doi.org/10.1145/2441776.2441840

Published: 23 February 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Trust remains a challenge in globally distributed development teams. In order to investigate how trust plays out in this context, we conducted a qualitative study of 5 multi-national IT organizations. We interviewed 58 individuals across 10 countries and made two principal findings. First, study participants described trust in terms of their expectations of their colleagues. These expectations fell into one of three dimensions: that socially correct behavior will persist, that team members possess technical competency, and that individuals will demonstrate concern for others. Second, our study participants described trust as a dynamic process, with phases including formation, dissolution, adjustment and restoration. We provide new insights into these dimensions and phases of trust within distributed teams which extend existing literature. Our study also provides guidelines on effective practices within distributed teams in addition to providing implications for the extension of software engineering and collaboration tools.

References

[1]

Al-Ani, B., and Redmiles, D. In strangers we trust? Findings of an empirical study of distributed Development. In Proc. ICGSE 2009. IEEE Press (2009), 121--130.

Digital Library

[2]

Al-Ani, B., Trainer, E., Redmiles, D., and Simmons, E. Trust and surprise in distributed teams: Towards an understanding of expectations and adaptations. In Proc. ICIC 2012, ACM press (2012), 97--106.

Digital Library

[3]

Atlas.ti v. 6 {computer program}. ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH (2011).

[4]

Barber, B. The Logic and Limits of Trust. Rutgers University Press (1983).

[5]

Bos, N., Olson, J., Gergle, D., Olson, G., and Wright, Z. Effects of four computer-mediated communications channels on trust development. In Proc. CHI 2002. ACM Press (2002), 135--140.

Digital Library

[6]

Charmaz, K. Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. Sage (2006).

[7]

Corbin, J. M. and Strauss, A. L. Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory, 3rd edition. Sage (2008).

[8]

Fulmer, C. Ashley and Gelfand, Michele Joy, Dynamic Trust Processes: Trust Dissolution and Restoration. In Proc. IACM 23rd Annual Conference, (2010).

[9]

Furst, S., Blackburn, R., and Rosen, B. Virtual team effectiveness: A proposed research agenda. Information Systems Journal 9 (1999), 249--269.

[10]

Glaser, B. G. Basics of grounded theory analysis. Sociology Press (1992).

[11]

Herbsleb, J. D., Mockus, A., Finholt, T. A., & Grinter, R. E. (2000). Distance, dependencies, and delay in a global collaboration Proceedings of the ACM 2000 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 319--328). New York: ACM Press.

Digital Library

[12]

Hosmer, L. T. Trust: The connecting link between organizational theory and philosophical ethics. Academy of Management Review 20, 2 (1995), 379--403.

[13]

Jarvenpaa, S. L., Knoll, K., and Leidner, D. E. Is anybody out there?: antecedents of trust in global virtual teams. J. Manage. Inf. Syst. 14, 4 (1998), 29--64.

Digital Library

[14]

Jarvenpaa, S. L., Shaw, T. R., and Staples, D. S. Toward contextualized theories of trust: The role of trust in global virtual teams. Information Systems Research 15, 3 (2004), 250--267.

Digital Library

[15]

March J. G., and Heath C. A primer on decision making: How decisions happen. Free Press (1994).

[16]

Olson, G. M., and Olson. J. S. Distance matters. Hum.-Comput. Interact. 15, 2 (2000), 139--178.

Digital Library

[17]

Palen, L., and Dourish, P. 2003. Unpacking "privacy" for a networked world. Conference on Human factors in computing systems, (CHI). ACM, NY, NY, 129--136.

Digital Library

[18]

Rocco, E. (1998). Trust breaks down in electronic contexts but can be repaired by some initial face-to-face contact CHI '98 Conference Proceedings ACM, NY, NY, (pp. 496--502). New York: ACM.

Digital Library

[19]

Sabherwal, R. The role of trust in outsourced IS development projects. Communications of the ACM 42, 2 (1999), 80--86.

Digital Library

[20]

Trainer, E. and Redmiles, D. F. "Foundations for the Design of Visualizations that Support Trust in Distributed Teams," In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI 2012, Capri Island, Italy), 34--41.

Digital Library

[21]

Tyler, J. R. and Tang, J. C. 2003. When Can I Expect an Email Response? A Study of Rhythms in Email Usage. Proceedings from ECSCW '03: European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 239--258.

Digital Library

Cited By

Bock TAlznauer NJoblin MApel S(2023)Automatic Core-Developer Identification on GitHub: A Validation StudyACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/359380332:6(1-29)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593803
Madhi KReimer LJonas SHaiduc SSchneider J(2023)Attribution-Based Personas in Virtual Software Engineering EducationProceedings of the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1109/ICSE-SEET58685.2023.00028(235-246)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE-SEET58685.2023.00028
Iqbal JAhmad RAmin FShoaib MNasir M(2022)Towards dealing with commonly occurring requirements engineering process issues during software development outsourcingPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.026960717:7(e0269607)Online publication date: 14-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269607
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Globally distributed system developers: their trust expectations and processes
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing and business

Recommendations

Globally distributed teams: the effect of diversity on trust, cohesion and individual performance

Globally distributed teams are becoming more common among organizations that seek to maximize knowledge creation and innovation for competitive advantage. Although they are becoming widely used among global organizations, distributed teams are creating ...
An experimental study of Chinese tourists using a company-hosted WeChat official account
Abstract
Company-hosted WeChat official accounts (WOA) have emerged as a commonly-used marketing channel recently. The relationship between user motivations and behaviors in WOA need to be explored. This study distinguishes between consumers ...
Job Satisfaction of Information Technology Workers: The Impact of Career Orientation and Task Automation in a CASE Environment

This study investigates the job satisfaction of information technology (IT) professionals in an environment where computer aided software engineering (CASE) tools are used. Although the recent downturn in the economy might have temporarily eased the IT ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '13: Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work

February 2013

1594 pages

ISBN:9781450313315

DOI:10.1145/2441776

General Chairs:
Amy Bruckman
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
,
Scott Counts
Microsoft Research, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Cliff Lampe
University of Michigan, USA
,
Loren Terveen
University of Minnesota, USA

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 23 February 2013

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CSCW '13

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CSCW '13: Computer Supported Cooperative Work

February 23 - 27, 2013

Texas, San Antonio, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

Upcoming Conference

CSCW '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

October 18 - 22, 2025

Bergen , Norway

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

36
Total Citations
View Citations
552
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)17
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 30 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Bock TAlznauer NJoblin MApel S(2023)Automatic Core-Developer Identification on GitHub: A Validation StudyACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/359380332:6(1-29)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593803
Madhi KReimer LJonas SHaiduc SSchneider J(2023)Attribution-Based Personas in Virtual Software Engineering EducationProceedings of the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1109/ICSE-SEET58685.2023.00028(235-246)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE-SEET58685.2023.00028
Iqbal JAhmad RAmin FShoaib MNasir M(2022)Towards dealing with commonly occurring requirements engineering process issues during software development outsourcingPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.026960717:7(e0269607)Online publication date: 14-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269607
Li LFreeman GMcNeese N(2022)Channeling End-User Creativity: Leveraging Live Streaming for Distributed Collaboration in Indie Game DevelopmentProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35551736:CSCW2(1-28)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3555173
Yang CYamashita NKuzuoka HWang HFoong E(2022)Distance Matters to Weak TiesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34928636:GROUP(1-26)Online publication date: 14-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3492863
Sushitha SPoornima H(2022)Constructive Outline for Storming Strategies with Cloud (COSSWC)2022 Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Smart Energy (ICAIS)10.1109/ICAIS53314.2022.9742996(1156-1160)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICAIS53314.2022.9742996
Tyagi SSibal RSuri B(2022)Empirically developed framework for building trust in distributed agile teamsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2022.106828145:COnline publication date: 1-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2022.106828
Vereschak OBailly GCaramiaux B(2021)How to Evaluate Trust in AI-Assisted Decision Making? A Survey of Empirical MethodologiesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34760685:CSCW2(1-39)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3476068
Yang C(2021)Understanding and Reducing Perception Gaps with Mediated Social Cues when Building Workplace Relationships through CMCCompanion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3462204.3481800(303-306)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3462204.3481800
Freeman GMcNeese N(2021)A Tale of Creativity and StrugglesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34491505:CSCW1(1-27)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3449150
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten