Antecedents of Trust in teams with different virtuality levels

Research has analyzed the effects of Communication and Information Technologies (ICTs) on trust development in groups. The results obtained in these studies point out that it is still unclear what the antecedents of group trust in technology-enabled communication and collaboration environments are. This paper addresses the question of which antecedents predict trust development in teams with different virtuality levels. The aim is to study the influence of group potency and group task commitment on trust development in different virtuality levels. A laboratory experiment was carried out with groups randomly assigned to the two virtuality levels (videoconference and computer-mediated communication) and a control condition (face to face communication). The results showed that group task commitment and group potency improve trust development in the high virtuality level teams over time. However, group potency increases group trust only in the first group work session in teams with a middle virtuality level (videoconference)