Virtual Teams: The Role of Leadership in Trust Management

Abstract

This chapter analyses how to build and maintain trust in virtual teams. Based on literature on trust and leadership in virtual teams, the purpose of this chapter is to identify e-leaders’ roles and behaviors related to trust management and development. It argues that trust is qualified as swift in virtual context and that it relies heavily on leaders contribution to be established and maintained. E-leaders have to adopt new roles and to build strategies to manage task achievement, individual team members’ needs, and team cohesion to face problems related to distortion of the communication processes, member diversity, technology problems, and time pressure that inhibit trust management.