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Swift trust is a form of
trust Trust often refers to: * Trust (social science), confidence in or dependence on a person or quality It may also refer to: Business and law * Trust law, a body of law under which one person holds property for the benefit of another * Trust (bus ...
occurring in temporary organizational structures, which can include quick starting groups or
team A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal. As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to inf ...
s. It was first explored by Debra Meyerson and colleagues in 1996. In swift trust theory, a group or team assumes trust initially, and later verifies and adjusts trust beliefs accordingly.Meyerson, D., Weick, K. E., & Kramer, R. M. (1996). Swift trust and temporary groups. In Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Traditionally, trust has been examined in the context of long-term relationships. The establishment of trust has been thought to rely largely on the history of a group and the interactions between members. This traditional view of trust generally assumes that trust builds over time. However, this view is becoming problematic with the increase in globalization, change in technologies, and an increased reliance on temporary teams by organizations. Meyerson et al. propose that swift trust provides the necessary, initial, cognitive confidence for a temporary team to interact as if trust were present. However, swift trust requires an individual to verify that a team can manage vulnerabilities and expectations.


Trust in teams

Researchers study trust at the group or team level because of trust's relationship to overall group performance. High levels of trust are related to increased positive attitudes toward the organization, increased attitudinal commitment to the group, and team satisfaction. Trust is also related to higher levels of
autonomy In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's ow ...
in the team. Therefore, it is interesting that groups that are short lived, and do not experience traditional forms of trust building, are still able to experience the benefits of trust within the group.


Conventional models of trust

The trust literature distinguishes two antecedents of trust:
trustworthiness Trust is the willingness of one social entity, party (the trustor) to become vulnerable to another party (the trustee) on the presumption that the trustee will act in ways that benefit the trustor. In addition, the trustor does not have contro ...
and trust propensity. Trustworthiness is the ability, benevolence, and
integrity Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions. Inte ...
of a trustee, and trust propensity is a dispositional willingness to rely on others.Colquitt, J. A., Scott, B. A., & LePine, J. A. (2007). Trust, trustworthiness, and trust propensity: a meta-analytic test of their unique relationships with risk taking and job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(4), 909. Traditional forms of trust formation center on the "unique effects of ability, benevolence, and integrity on trust; the mediating role of trust in explaining the relationships between trustworthiness, trust propensity, and behavioral outcomes" (p. 917). There are three dimensions of trustworthiness that have significant, unique relationships with trust (ability, benevolence, and integrity). These trustworthiness dimensions reflect both cognition-based and affect-based sources of trust. Of course, trust often still requires a leap beyond the expectations that ability, benevolence, and integrity can create. Trust propensity may then play a role in driving that leap. This categorization of antecedents of trust is partially relevant, but not a sufficient explanation for the formation of swift trust. Situations that arise that would require a form of swift trust may be unable to foster the antecedents necessary for traditional trust formation. Integrity and ability would not have adequate time to establish themselves in a swift starting group setting. However, benevolence as an antecedent may be helpful in the explanation of swift trust in that it is a more affective acknowledgment of mutual concern inherent in the relationship. Additionally, higher levels of trust propensity might foster greater levels of trust in a situation that would require swift trust.


Conventional models of time-dependent trust

Deterrence-based trust occurs when an individual fears punishment; as a result, an individual holds true to his or her responsibilities. In knowledge-based trust, some knowledge is known of the trustee and this allows the trustor to understand and predict the
trustee Trustee (or the holding of a trusteeship) is a legal term which, in its broadest sense, is a synonym for anyone in a position of trust and so can refer to any individual who holds property, authority, or a position of trust or responsibility to ...
's actions. Identification-based trust allows for one member to act as an agent for another member because they identify with each other based on their common goals and shared values. There is also an institutional, or impersonal, form of trust, which, according to Luhmann (1979), is based on the norms of an institution rather than emotional bonds or past history between members. For example, institutional trust is what allows seeming strangers to engage in contracts, due to the faith in the legal system. However, both the interpersonal and impersonal forms of trust assume that the relationship will have some longevity. Benefits that a team gains from being trustful tend to be long term, and conversely, the benefits of acting in an untrustful manner are generally short term.Jarvenpaa, S. L., Shaw, T. R., & Staples, D. (2004). Toward contextualized theories of trust: The role of trust in global virtual teams. Information Systems Research, 15(3), 250-264.doi:10.1287/isre.1040.0028 Because both the impersonal and interpersonal forms for trust assume some sort of longevity, swift trust addresses the ability of a temporary team to form and maintain high levels of trust.


In organizations

Given the fact that temporary work teams are frequently utilized in an organization, it is necessary to understand how trust is being formed within these teams. Generally, trust is assumed to build over time, with a trustor updating beliefs about the trust-related attributes of the trustee. Swift trust is an explanation of trust development in these temporary, nonconventional teams. Swift trust is "a unique form of collective perception and relating that is capable of managing issues of vulnerability, uncertainty, risk, and expectations". Instead of trust being an evidence-driven information process, swift trust is created from category-driven processes. Because a temporary group is under time constraints, the group only has time for quick categorization of team members. This can result in groupings based on surface characteristics like tone of voice or style of dress.Kohler, T., Cortina, J. M., Salas, E., & Garven, A. J., (2011). Trust in temporary work groups. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Management and Marketing, The University of Melbourne. Meyerson et al. propose that a temporary team interacts as if trust were present, but then must verify that the team can manage expectations. In other words, because time is limited, the team assumes trust initially, and later verifies and adjusts trust beliefs accordingly. Although swift trust can still be a strong form of trust, it is conditional and in need of reinforcement and calibration by actions. As previously mentioned, trust is not always time-dependent. One of the ways researchers examine the interaction between trust and time is through the classic
prisoner's dilemma The Prisoner's Dilemma is an example of a game analyzed in game theory. It is also a thought experiment that challenges two completely rational agents to a dilemma: cooperate with their partner for mutual reward, or betray their partner ("defe ...
experiments. In these experiments, many participants were willing to share money with a stranger in the hope that he or she would also share his or her money, allowing both participants to split the money equally. The results indicated that participants were more likely to share their earnings with a fellow participant rather than steal from them. Given that these participants had no prior interaction, it is interesting to examine the trust between them. These prisoner's dilemma experiments highly relate to swift trust theory because in both instances trust is present almost immediately, despite the lack of prior interaction between the individuals.McKnight, D. H. (1998). Initial trust formation in new organizational relationships. (Special Topic Forum on Trust in and Between Organizations). The Academy of Management review, 23 (3), 473.


Components

Swift trust has both cognitive and
normative Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A norm in ...
(i.e., ideal or standard) components. The cognitive components of swift trust involve early trusting beliefs, while the normative components reinforce this trust. Meyerson et al. explain the normative components as providing "social proofs" and "fail-safe mechanisms" that can regulate trust and "avoid exaggerated confidence".Crisp, C. B. & Jarvenpaa, S.L., (2013). Swift trust in global virtual teams trusting beliefs and normative actions. Journal of personnel psychology, 12 (1), 45-56.


Cognitive components

The cognitive components of swift trust relate to collective perceptions of the group that are immediately apparent and are based on expectations related to social identities and self-categorizations. When individual group members are not able to rely on prior interactions with other team members, they rely on these social or self-categories to promote favorable
in-group In sociology and social psychology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group with which an individual does not identify. People may for example ide ...
beliefs and actions that foster early trusting behavior. These early trusting beliefs tend to be self reinforcing in that individuals focus on information that validates their trusting beliefs while contrary evidence may go unnoticed.


Normative components

While cognitive components of swift trust are important for the start-up of the team, they may not be sufficient for maintaining trust, especially in the face of high uncertainty and in electronic contexts like
virtual team A virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, or remote team) usually refers to a group of individuals who work together from different geographic locations and rely on communication technology such as email, inst ...
s. Therefore, many believe that normative action components are necessary components in swift trust. According to Meyerson et al., swift trust erodes with "deviations from or violations of group norms and presumptions about competent...behavior" of the team (p. 190). Crisp and Jarvenpaa propose that the normative influence on swift trust may be much more important than originally theorized by Meyerson et al. Norms promote adaptive behavior by providing guidelines for what is considered acceptable in a group or team. Normative actions build on early trusting beliefs and help increase confidence in the
team A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal. As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to inf ...
's abilities and can help the team overcome obstacles. By setting norms and mutually agreed upon standards, and acting in accordance, the team reinforces the social attraction to the group. Normative actions also promote positive attributions of other group member's behavior. Normative and cognitive components interact in swift trust by working in conjunction with one another. Cognitive components continue to interrelate with normative actions, complementing one another, not replacing one another. For example, if teams have low early trusting beliefs, strong normative actions may be seen as controlling and inhibiting rather than coordinating and helpful. Some researchers have noted that because many temporary teams are geographically separated or have members from different cultures and social systems, accepted norms could vary significantly. In fact, in a study by Postmes, Spears, and Lea, (2000), normative influences emerged over time, not through preconceived rules. In essence, interaction over time defined appropriate group behavior, not preconceived norms. While norms may provide a source for influencing behavior, it is the normative actions that provide the mechanisms for explaining the nature of normative influence.


Swift trust in different work teams

Swift trust has been studied in a variety of work groups, like global virtual teams (GVT) and swift starting action teams (STATs). , a contract-based, temporary workforce is becoming the norm rather than the exception. This shift is seen in many organizations' reliance on ad-hoc, non-traditional teams.


Swift trust in global virtual teams

A
virtual team A virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, or remote team) usually refers to a group of individuals who work together from different geographic locations and rely on communication technology such as email, inst ...
, as defined by Kristof et al. 1995, is "a self-managed knowledge work team, with distributed expertise, that forms and disbands to address a specific organizational goal." These teams generally have limited communication due to large time and space differences and rely largely on electronic communication. Swift trust is critical to virtual teams when there is limited or no time to build interpersonal relationships. Trust is based on an early assumption that the given team is trustworthy, but this assumption is verified through actions around the joint task, scheduling, and monitoring.


Swift trust in swift starting action teams

Swift starting action teams (STATs) are highly independent teams composed of skilled individuals that work together to quickly and effectively complete a demanding, complex, time-pressured, and high-stakes project. These individuals have no prior experience with one another and must perform their task almost immediately upon formation. Traditional theories of trust formation do not adequately explain how trust forms in STATs, given that there is no prior experience with team members to establish trust and the team must work immediately. Like GVTs, researchers believe that STATs also utilize swift trust. Swift trust provides a basis for explaining how STATs are able to have trust within the team.


Criticisms

Swift trust theory is not without its criticisms. Swift trust is fragile and cannot be sustained without subsequent communication. Jarvenpaa and Leidner note that it is necessary but not sufficient for the communication of trustworthiness.Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Leidner, D. E. (1998). Communication and trust in global virtual teams. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3 (4), 1–36. Additionally, some researchers have suggested that swift trust as theorized by Meyerson et al. is not a true form of trust, but rather a substitution of trust. It is suggested that swift trust is simply a risk management strategy. Furthermore, swift trust might inhibit actual trust building between the trustor and trustee.


See also

* Industrial-organizational psychology * Psychology portal *
Virtual team A virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, or remote team) usually refers to a group of individuals who work together from different geographic locations and rely on communication technology such as email, inst ...


References

{{Reflist, 30em Management & Organization theory