Trust and culture in remote project teams

In the previous chapter we proposed a new conceptualization of trust as a social practice and we analyzed how a virtual team develops and maintains trust by signaling, interpreting, negotiating, and cooperating. In this chapter we add a new level of complexity as we explore how virtual teams in Germany and Singapore build and maintain trust. First, we offer a theoretical overview of cultural dimensions theory, the most widely applied theory in intercultural management and organizational research, and we discuss the relationship between trust and culture. Then we analyze team case studies from Germany and Singapore and explore what virtual teams do to build and maintain trust (e.g., practices of creating rules of communication, sharing, and rotating power, checking for common understanding) and the cultural preferences and variations mentioned with these practices. Our findings help us better understand trust practices in cultural contexts.