Monitoring and Trust in Virtual Teams

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine whether monitoring moderated the impact of trust on the project performance of 57 virtual teams. Two sources of monitoring were examined: internal monitoring done by team members and external monitoring done by someone outside of the team. Two types of trust were also examined: affective-based trust, or trust based on emotion; and cognitive trust, or trust based on competency. Results indicate that when internal monitoring was high, affective trust was associated with increases in performance. However, affective trust was associated with decreases in performance when external monitoring was high. Both types of monitoring reduced the strong positive relationship between cognitive trust and the performance of virtual teams. Results of this study provide new insights about monitoring and trust in virtual teams and inform both theory and design.