Date of Award
5-2016
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Legacy Department
Applied Psychology
Committee Member
Dr. Marissa Shuffler-Porter, Committee Chair
Committee Member
Dr. Fred Switzer
Committee Member
Dr. C. Shawn Burke
Abstract
As workforce globalization continues to rise, it becomes crucial to understand the impacts that team distribution may have on various team components. The present study aimed to address this question by identifying how partially distributed teams develop team trust, distrust, and shared leadership in comparison to face-to-face teams. Specifically, this lab based study examines team distribution as a contextual input variable. Consistent with the hypothesized model, results indicate that collocated teams have higher levels of trust, while distributed teams have higher levels of distrust. Further, teams that are collocated and have higher levels of trust tend to outperform their distributed counterparts. Surprisingly, there appeared to be no indirect effect between team trust or distrust and performance through shared leadership due to a lack of variability in shared leadership across the teams. Overall, this study highlights the importance of trust within collocated and distributed teams and assists in clarifying the construct confusion that presently exists between trust and distrust. Implications for theoretical development, practical application, and areas for future research are discussed.
Recommended Citation
Verhoeven, Dana Casey, "An Examination of Trust, Distrust, and Shared Leadership in Distributed Teams" (2016). All Theses. 2364.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/2364