Exploring the state of discipline on the formation of swift trust within global virtual teams

The study of global virtual teams (GVTs) is important in the Information System (IS) field because GVTs employ a work structure that is heavily dependent on information communication technology. Besides the use of technology, GVTs are also composed of people from different cultural backgrounds. As such, GVTs are challenged not only to collaborate and coordinate projects in a virtual environment, but also to promote a trusting working relationship among culturally diverse members. In this meta-synthesis research, we sampled 3239 documents spanning fifteen (15) years, from 1995-2010 in seven (N=7) top IS journals. Trained coders read through all the articles systematically and coded the contents manually; only 55 useable articles were found that matched three or four of the codes (i.e., GVTs, virtual teams, trust, and swift trust). In the 15-year period, we found a startling result: less than 2% of articles published in the selected top IS journals have discussed this crucial topic. Hence, many more studies are warranted in order for the topic to be fully understood by IS scholars. We present the findings based on two thematic analyses: 1) GVTs vs. virtual teams and 2) GVT and trust and swift trust.