Competences versus trust in a young virtual organization.

Dumitrescu, Diana Mariana ; Popa, Cicerone Laurentiu ; Nica, Gabriela Beatrice 等

1. INTRODUCTION

Traditionally, researchers assumed that any organization thrives to be as independent as possible and control its own destiny. But new organizational trends prove the exact opposite. Both profit and non-profit organizations make strategic alliances in order to assure a maximum success rate. Organizational borders start to fade and interdependent networks are more and more numerous (Draft, 1993). One kind of such a network is the virtual organization.

One definition describes the virtual organization as: "a collection of geographically distributed, functionally and/or culturally diverse entities that are linked by electronic forms of communication and rely on lateral, dynamic relationships for coordination." (Desanctis & Monge 1999). Another definition encloses some extra elements: "the virtual organization is a network of entities that act in a unitary fashion during a determined period of time, sharing the member's resources and capabilities based on information technology. Its network-like architecture contains hubs that represent research or innovative teams" (Cotet et al, 2007). By making a summary of numerous definitions, we can conclude that the main characteristics of the virtual organization are: flexible organizational structure, based on knowledge, intensive use of technology, a set of activities concentrated around main competences, free, real time, information flow, multiple coordination points, teams build according to project requirements, minimal control due to high specialization of members. But do people really base their choises on evaluating competences alone? Personal relationships can serve as control mechanisms, because they build up trust and reduce opportunistic behaviour (Kraut et al, 1999). They play an important role in the process of initial trust building. The question that we ask is: do members of virtual organizations choose partners based on evaluating competences, or on trust?

Our study was conducted over a period of 10 months, starting September 2007. The object of study was a young virtual organization, based in Romania, which developed activities in the field of engineering research. The used research methods were: participative observation, qualitative investigation (focus-groups) and a quantitative survey based on questionnaires (Bulai, 2000). The research began with documentation of the existing literature in the field. Then we conducted a paired focus-group with members in the virtual organization, and after analyzing all the gathered information we elaborated a set of 21 questions which represented the questionnaire. This research instrument was applied both in the real and virtual environment, to a number of 28 individuals. This was considered to be the representative group sample for the organization under study. The main research question was: do partners in the virtual organization base their actions on trust or on competences? Additionally, we wanted to find out how trust is built in the virtual working environment.

2. FINDINGS

In order to have a good professional collaboration, a good personal relation with one's partner/collaborator is considered as important by 59,5% of respondents, and as vital by 39.3% of respondents. Therefore, in order to have a successful cooperation in the virtual organization, partners need to establish informal connections with one another. The fact that they see each other vary rarely face to face leads to difficulty in negotiations and building a common understanding over a subject. For any individual it is difficult to work with someone he doesn't know or who he cannot see. Messages sent within the virtual environment lack credibility and power of persuading because they are impersonal. This is why each individual wishes to assign a face, a personality to whom he sends and from whom he receives virtual messages. There is a basic need of establishing human direct contact. Negotiation becomes thus easier; as trust is influenced by the degree one is familiar with its collaborator. Also, the sense of responsibility rises towards someone with whom one shares a personal relation.

In the classification of different aspects that lead to building trust between partners, the first place was attributed to "competences", the second to "previous collaborations", third was "personal relations", fourth "the team in which the person belongs", fifth "the team-building", sixth "the work-shop" and seventh "recommendation by a trusted person". In the process of building trust, a partner can be convinced of his collaborator's competences during a certain collaborating activity (a project with specific tasks), which can be unsuccessful, situation in which trust drops. If the collaboration proves the validity of the partner's competences, then trust rises. Previous collaboration is therefore closely connected with validation of competences, and both contribute to the process of building up trust. Trust derives from previous collaborations in the case when partner's competences are proves and appreciated. The importance of previous collaborations in the process of building up trust must be seen through the opportunity for validating competences. What is interesting is that one form of trust, recommendation from a trusted person was placed last. We can deduce that the form of trust that members in the virtual organization appreciate is of first hand nature that is based on personal experience.

In the analysis of the frequency of communication required for building and keeping trust, 48,8% of respondents agree that they should communicate a few times a week with their partners in order to keep a good future cooperation. This communication should take place even if individuals are not involved at the time in a common project. It is therefore a communication for maintaining a personal relation, which contributes to maintaining trust. 44% of respondents considered the frequency should be "at least once per week". Summarizing the two, 92,8% of participants feel that the effort of constant communication with partners, even if it is an informal one, is vital for future cooperation. As one participant to the focus-group said on the matter "out of sight out of mind". Another form of this effort is represented by the "politeness messages", send at different holidays or special occasions. These are considered as important by 91,7% of respondents. All these types of communication represent the "support activity" within a virtual organization. It is in everyone's interest to maintain cordial relations with as many partners as possible, because this way one can be seen as a prospective partner

Specialized literature claims that the choice of a virtual project partner should be based on the best suited competences. In this situation, a member of a virtual team should always choose the person who has the adequate competences for the given task, no matter if he knows him or not, no matter if he trusts him or not. The key question that members had to answer in order to settle the matter of prioritising between trust and competences was: "In an important/complex project, if you would have to choose between an old partner, with whom you previously collaborated well, and a new partner, who had more resources or a better expertise in the field, who would you choose?". The term of competences was deliberately avoided in order not to influence the respondents.

57,1% of respondents choose the old partner, which proves that despite the possibility of choosing better competences, members consider the risk of un unknown partner too big, especially in an complex project, which by itself has high risks. Made to choose between two compromises, they preferred to base themselves on a safety factor: the familiarity of the partner. The choice was made in the context of a young organization, which hasn't completed the forming of the professional network of relations between its members. Because it still is in the phase of building trust and testing competences, it is understandable why this criteria in momentarily most important.

The relatively large percent of non-responses (14,3%) to this question (which marked the "I don't know/ I don't want to respond" box, therefore not skipped the question entirely), suggests that respondents had problems in making a decision on the matter. If they allocated a short period of time for filling out the questionnaire, they gave quick answers, without interpreting the questions. Faced with this certain question though, as was also noticed in the focus-group, participants were reticent in giving a definite answer, because of the confusion between the manifest and latent levels. Because the majority of previous answers claimed the primary importance of competences, the choice of trust over competences made in this situation created a conflict of principles in participant's minds. From the very beginning of the project of forming a virtual network based on knowledge, members have heard stereotypes such as "the purpose of the project is to build a network of competences". Thus, this belief was suggested to them, which is also in accordance with the theoretical model of the virtual organization.

But man has a sceptical nature. He cannot exclusively rely on theory or recommendation (like recommendation was placed last in the classification of factors which build trust). The individual, thus also the member in the virtual organization, needs his own experience in order to take a certain stand on a matter or on a person. This is why he will not risk, or very rarely will do so, to enter an important project which by itself is risky, together with a unknown person, on whom he cannot be sure he can rely, with whom he doesn't know how well he will cooperate, and about whom he doesn't know the level of competences he claims to have. The association of the term "partner" (in the virtual context) was mostly made with the concept of "collaboration" or "collaborator" (by 41,7% of respondents). Interestingly enough, no association was made between "partner" and "competence" or any relater term. Moreover, 13,1% of respondents associated the word "trust", which again proves the closeness towards trust then towards competences of the "partner" notion in the virtual environment. Other associations were: "communication"--11,9%,, "project"-7,1%, "ally", "internet", "e-mail", "network".

The main association suggests a positive notion, referring to common activities. Thus, the partnership is formed in time, by working together. If the partnership in the virtual environment is defined by common actions, than the functioning mechanism of the virtual organization is that of building trust in time, following past collaborations. The association with "ally" is placed in the same analytical understanding. The third most used association (communication) contributes to confirming the idea that partnership is based on trust which is consolidated through formal or informal constant communication. Intensive communication is what makes possible collaboration between two persons geographically dispersed, and thus it's no wonder that in member's minds, to be partner with someone means to be in constant communication with him.

3. CONCLUSION

The choice of trust over competences is valid for the incipient stage in the life of a virtual organization. Nevertheless, trust must be understood as a process in which proving claimed competences is the most important factor, followed by previous collaboration, personal trust and constant communication. In this development stage the manifest level (which claims the importance of competences) and the latent one (which claims the importance on trust) come into conflict in member's mind. If asked theoretically, they will say competences are more important, but in a practical situation, they will instinctively choose trust. Trust is the mechanism which makes possible human socialization; it is the base of formal or informal relations, but a professional collaboration can prove disastrous if trust is not followed and enforced by competence validation. Our further studies will include making another opinion survey on the matter, using the same interrogative items, two years from now. We consider that by than partners will have enough time to get to know each other, and than the process of building mutual trust will have been complete. In this case, partners should rely exclusively on best suited competences when choosing a project collaborator.

4. REFERENCES

Bulai, A. (2007), The focus-grup method, Ed. Paideia, ISBN 973-8064-12-7, Bucharest

Cotet C.E., Osiceanu S., Costache B. (2007), The Management and Marketing of Reserach-Development in architectures of the virtual enterprise, Ed. Printech, ISBN 978-973-718-893-9, Bucharest

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