1. Introduction

By using the new technologies co-ordination and cooperation can become independent of time and place. Malone (1994) predicts a shift to more co-ordination-intensive organisational structures, like for instance network organisations, (inter)organisational networks and virtual teams as a result of the decreasing costs of co-ordination. In practice, however, most co-ordination and collaboration is still done in ‘old fashioned ways’ using traditional communication media.¹

Many scholars suggest namely that teams can not work at a distance (so indepenent of time and place) without face-to-face contacts. Characteristic is the following position: “Rich’ media - those that transmit higher levels of nonverbal cues - are more appropriate in ambiguous or relational communication situations, ‘lean’ media are more appropriate in less ambiguous, routine situations” (Daft & Lengel, 1984; see also Hiltz, Johnson, & Turoff, 1986; Nohria & Eccles, 1992, Kayany, Wotring & Forrest,1996). Sometimes implicit, but mostly explicit, it is said that face-to-face contacts between networkactors is seen as the ideal way of communicating. Literature on co-ordination intensive organisations (like network organisations and virtual teams) stress the importance of the factors trust in those organisational structures. But regarding to Daft and Lengel without face-to-face contacts trust can not be established. Face-to-face replacing communication media are 'better' the more they approach this face-to-face ideal. Richer in this context means that little or no "cues" (for instance body language, tone of voice, gestures) are being filtered out in the communication proces. It is argued that face-to-face communication is needed in situations with a lack of trust. These kind of situations are characterized by uncertainty about intentions, plans and actions of other network actors. Especially organizations with a hierarchic structure and an one-way communication stream relate to this characterization of competitve relations. On the other hand in case of complementary relations (characterized by trust and dialogue-based communicatie) the need for detailed strategical indespensable information (in terms of non-verbal cues) about the other actors will be substantially less. In situations were we can find complementary relations it is possible to leave this face-to-face ideal and vary in the choice of the communication medium corresponding to the specific situation and the individual needs of the involved cooperating actors. Of course there is no garanty that with the current state of the CMC the choice of the medium will lead to optimal functioning of the virtual team, but without this face-to-face norm, the chance for this will increase.

A central question in this research will be to find recommondations in how organisational members can be supported in developing trust and in improving this above described new ways of co-ordination by utilising the possibilities of the modern information and communication technologies.

The ultimate goal of the thesis is to develop a methodology and a set of instruments that supports distributed organisational members in communication, cooperation and co-ordination processes supported by information- and communication technology in an effective manner. Organisational members will be stimulated to look for new a new concept of trust, new co-ordination mechanisms and processes and new communication medium that fit their situation best. (task-medium fit theory is much more extended here)

The received view and definition about trust comes from Rousseau. His conceptualization of trust will be used as starting point of this article.

The number of definitions and conceptualizations of trust that are being proposed makes extremely difficult to navigate this vast literature. Some authors indeed have started to propose typological systems intended to organize the vast literature on the subject (Sitkin and Roth,1993; Lewicki and Bunker, 1996; Hosmer, 1995; Granovetter,19XX; 1992, Bigley and Pearce, 1998). In this paper, we refer to the conceptualization proposed by Rousseau and Lewicki This will for us be the traditional view of trust. As opposite we will us the alternative view on trust: swift trust. The traditional view on trust makes it difficult to establish trust without face-to-face contacts. The new view,we will argue, can establish trust at a distance. Due to the limit room available, in this paper we can not present a complete discussion on the other categorizations proposed.

What we find in this definition, and what we find in definitions provided by others,² is that trust can be seen as the mutual expectation of trustworthy behavior that exists between two or more parties. In the literature there is agreement about the assumptions on which the concept of trust is based.

A, There is a degree of interdependence between truster and trustee (Swift trust, Commorg example)

B. Trust provides (for the truster) a way to cope with risk or uncertainty in exchange relationships. Trust has to overcome this uncertainty.

C. The trusting party expects that the vulnerability resulting from the acceptance of risk will not be taken advantage of by the other party in the relationship.

These assumptions can also be found in the new form of trust, but there is divergence about the grounds on which these expectations are build.

In Rousseau's definition of trust there are three distinctions of trust to be made.³

- Calculative trust (gain information about the other)

- Relational trust (from inside the built relatonship you can model the other)

- Institutional trust (rules, laws e.d.)

This Rousseau trust is based on strategical collusion. The inability -or unwillingness for whatever reasons- for rational choice theory and its variant, to move beyond a fundamentally methodologically solipstiscic position. This model is very atomistic, with the emphasis on the calculating truster (or relational/institutional truster) The trustee is passive and serves as a source of information for the truster. The truster models the trustee and it's context. Can the trustee be trusted? The trustee is the passive subject of modelling by the trustee. This traditional view is enormously individualistic, how can this be explaned?

This kind of trust can be found in the competitive relations as explained above.

From a rational choice perspective the point of departure here is that acting is always strategical. Every actors acts in his own interests. Every actor puts his own objectives at front in a cooperation with other actors. If this is the point of departure: than modelling the other actors is the only option. In gaining information about the other the truster can make an assessment about the other. In this way a truster can value the information you will get directly from the trustee on thuthfullness because he knows things on forehand.

This alternative view beholds different assumptions on which the expectations that the trustee will behave trusthworthy are build. In this view it is possibble to build mutual understanding (and cooperating) from a non-strategical objective. This is not possible in the traditional view which is based on strategical collusion. In the alternative view the communication will be free from

distorted communicatie because the communication will be based on cooperative collusion. In this case the trustee can ask the truster for clarification for communicative actions, but vice versa the truster can do the same with the trustee. Also the trustee can give clarification about his actions and show in this way he is trustworthy. Speaking in terms of Habermas: actors can ask eachother questions of validity. Actors can ask for the truethfullness, completeness, the sincertiy and the warranty in the communication acts. Trust is based on

cooperative collusion. The trustee acknolegdes the interest and concern of the truster and also his uncertainty and vulnerability (and vice versa). Because of the vulnerabilty act of the trustee he reduces now actively the uncertainty of the truster.

PUNT:

Virtuele teams, of teams die voor projecten worden samengebracht zonder elkaar te kennen en geen toekomst in verdere samenwerking hebben, moeten zich baseren op SWIFT trust. Wil de samenwerking lukken (en daar heeft het hele team (eigen)belang bij) kunnen zij niet strategische met elkaar omgaan. Strategische collusie zal niet werken omdat er simpelweg geen tijd is om de ander te modelleren. (calculatief, relationeel/ervaring of institutioneel).

SWIFT trust: cooperatieve collusie kan snel opgebouwd worden omdat je open naar elkaar toe bent, je speelt open kaart. Dit doe je omdat er de bereidheid en noodzaak tot samenwerking is. Juist doordat je jezelf even kwetsbaar maakt als de ander (fysiek, of door contracten) verhoogt dit het vertrouwen in elkaar. Je laat elkaar zien dat je elkaars belangen herkent en erkent. Je laat zien dat je te vertrouwen bent en dat je sincere, warranted en eerlijk bent.

Following Ganzaroli and Kumar⁴ in their view of trust. They have introduced a distinction between two components of trust: tacit and explicit trust. "Tacit knowledge is contextual, grounded on individual and/or social experience, and therefore hard to formalize. Explicit knowledge, by contrast, is abstract, independent from contextual factors, and therefore can be represented and transmitted in formal and systematic language." (Ganzaroli, 1999, p.4). Although knowledge is never purely explicit or purely tacit.

Thus the term explicit trust to refers to components of trust that are based on our knowledge of the code used to transmit information and of the codified procedure and structure that guarantee the validity of the information itself. The term tacit trust instead is used to refer to components of trust that are mainly contextual. These are embedded within networks of social relations and contextual norms and values. Like knowledge, trust is never completely explicit nor completely tacit. The two are always combined together in different degrees. OVERSTAP MAKEN NAAR COOPERATIEF EN STRATEGICH HANDELEN IN TRADITIONELE VORM EN ALTERNATIEF. Tacit and EXPLICIT TRUST IN TRAD. VERREISen VEEL CUES à FACE-TO-FACE!

In this section the research topic is described from a more theoretical point of view by discussing some theories, frameworks and definitions found in literature as well as some interesting case studies in this field. Three general subtopics will be addressed:

1. A definition of co-ordination and an overview of types of co-ordination; Communication

Co-ordination has no meaning as long as it is not related to something to be co-ordinated. Generally an organisation subdivides its ultimate task in a wide range of specialised subtasks. Co-ordination can be viewed as “the management of interdependencies between organisational tasks or units” (Malone, 1994) in order to integrate these subtasks again and thereby fulfil the ultimate goals of the organisation. Before addressing co-ordination it is therefore useful to describe how we view the execution of tasks in an organisation: organisational work.

Galbraith versus The situated action perspective (Smagt, 1997; Suchman, 1987, 1994) sees co-ordination mechanisms and decision rules as resources instead of descriptions of prescribed behaviour. It asks for more interactional co-ordination because of the circumstantially contingent character of meaning and intention. That implicates that he should not just execute a pre-defined co-ordination mechanism, use a decision rule, or communicate the standard information, but check each time what the consequences are of his decisions made and the information communicated.

The above described way of co-ordinating could be explained as a shift to more ‘mutual adjustment’. However, there is a difference between co-ordination (situated action perspective) and mutual adjustment. Mutual adjustment resembles adaptive co-ordination: the interdependent tasks cannot be completed before adjustment has taken place. Interactional co-ordination deals more with the choice of how to co-ordinate the tasks this time, and can occur just before (what is the best co-ordination mechanism given the dependencies and the organisational context this time?), during or just after (has the dependency been managed adequately?) the actual execution of a task. This interactional process resembles the ‘metastructuring of technology use’ described by Orlikowski (1995),⁵ and we could call it the ‘metastructuring of co-ordination mechanisms’.

The main difference between distributed groups versus groups located on one physical location is that the key ingredients in effective functioning ‘co-ordination, communication and decision making’ are partly or totally executed at a distance. This means that when these processes are executed at a distance, the groups involved depend on information- and communication technologies to support these processes.

1. Laere, van, Y. (1988).
2. Mayer (1995, p. 712), James, M, Rowe, K en Saad, M.(1999, p. 7).
3. Lewicki, R.J., McAllister, D.J. en Bies, R.B. (1998). Trust and Distrust: New Relationships and realities. In: The Academy of Management Review. July 1998, volume 23, nr. 3. P.438-458
4. Ganzaroli, A and Kuldeep, K. (1999).
5. Orlikowsky describes a process of technology-use mediation -- which she defines as the deliberate, organizationally-sanctioned intervention within the context of use: it shapes how primary users structure their use of a technology, and therefore it can be suggested that this role may be interpreted more broadly as a process of metastructuring.