What factors causes the lack of trust in project management teams - Essay Example

30-07-2006 What factors causes the lack of trust in project management teams. Today most of the organizations embrace the notion of groups orteams. Teams have become the core unit in many organizations. Part of this based on the fact that groups are effective in solving problems and learn more rapidly than individuals. Teams may be necessary component of organizational success but their presence certainly doesn't guarantee success. Teams can be defined as" a small number of people with complementary skills, committed to common purpose, specific performance goals, a common working approach and mutual accountability." The above definition of Team itself explains that a team could be formed for the specific purpose that may be to execute and manage a specific project or projects. This team can be called as project management team. Teams are particularly important when problems and decisions involve very uncertain, complex and important situations and when the potential of conflict is great. Teams are clearly more appropriate when there is not an immediate time pressure. (Ware, 1993, 1994). But teams can also bring about the worst in us. Teams can result in a situation where the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Teams can be a big waste of time and energy, can enforce norms of low productivity and can exploit, stress and frustrate members. Trust plays the main role in functioning of any project management team. If the trust among team members is low then timely completion of projects and proper functioning of the team could not be assured. During the last few years there has been an increasing acknowledgement of the importance of trust in business interactions within the management and organizational literature. (Kramer& Tyler, 1994. Mayer, David &Schorman, 1995). Trust enables cooperation and becomes the means for complexity reduction even in situations where individual must act with uncertainty because they are in possession of ambiguous and incomplete information. It is not therefore surprising that in the current age of global and digital economy and virtuality (Tapscot, 1996) there has been an enormous interest in trust. According to Platt, Trust is essential to any team whether virtual or real. Real teams may interact day to day and chances of loosing trust may be lower but for the virtual teams where the possibility of day to day interaction or face-to face interactions are almost negligible, possibility of loosing trust is much higher. Trust is a state of a positive confidence through subjective expectation regarding the behaviour of somebody or something in a situation, which entails risk to trusting party (Baba, 1999). It is a dynamic and emergent social relationship that develops as participants interact with each other over time and depending on situation. Jarvenppa and Leidner have conducted one of the most detailed researches, which studied Trust and Teams thus far. It highlighted significant difference in the behaviour and strategies between high and low trust teams emphasize on the clarity of roles and responsibilities among team members. Panteli and Duncan in their study of virtual teams, projects managed by virtual organizations, which involves a team of geographically far off located contractual employees, finds that the content of communication both formal and informal as well as frequency helps in building and maintaining an interactive social situation and can act as the frame for reference in constructing the trust relationship. Finally after going through different studies we can classify the different factors, which causes lack of trust among project team members. Shared goals are and should be one of the important aspects of the project management team, which cannot be taken for granted. Lack of trust may be due to lack of awareness about shared goals among team members. Generally most of the members of the team may or do not know the goals of the team and everybody have their understanding and perceptions about goals which brings distrust among team members. Similarly some members may have complete picture or broader picture of the project in hand and some do not have which also causes distrust among team members. So the lack of information about the project and knowledgeable few creates lack of trust among team members. Selected few sometime runs the team by their views and never bother to consider the opinions of the other team members which results in lack of trust among team members. Some members of the team may have their own objectives, ambitions and priorities conflicting with project goals result in disparities and mistrust among team members. Thus construction of shared goals is often by no means a one-off activity but rather a process that requires the participation of all team members involved. Though this could be time consuming but it is better to invest time to it at the very initial phase of the project than to deal with poor trust and conflicting goals among team members. Power is another important factor that affects trust among project team members. Sometimes power battle between team members bound to happen and power of supremacy, power of knowledge etc. may crop up among team members. Dominance of one or two members of the team may results into lack of trust among team members. Fear to punish may form the team for any specific project but it cannot bind the team coherently. Deterrence -based trust may not last longer and members internally never trust to each other. Coercion plays havoc to teams trust. Sometimes silence may be interpreted as support but it always lacks trust. Individual ego of more knowledge and supremacy plays major role in establishing individual interests. Individual ambitions to move up faster than the others also play a crucial role in deciding trust among team members. Unless team and individual goals do not synchronize, lack of trust among team members is bound to happen. Power of being controlling authority or hierarchical power within team is bound to have an adverse affect on teams trust. Some member of the team must have more knowledge or experience but they have to accommodate and assimilate with the team and have to provide equal acceptance to all the members of the team and members should perceive the same then only trust among team members could be established. In the present era of communication, lack of communication or ambiguous communication is the most important factor that can cause lack of trust among team members. The teams having small number of members and having face-to-face communication often have lesser risk of lack of trust. But nowadays organizations and team members are often far located and team members may not interact face to face. In this type of situation, importance of communication increases to minimize lack of trust among team members. Real time communication among team members is also plays a major role in deciding trust among team members. Social interests and gathering or conversation in informal settings also have affects on the trust of team members. Apart from above main factors that causes lack of trust among team members of the project there are several other factor which affects trust among team members are lack of awareness about limitations and resources, lack of skills in working through differences, lack of time for "Teaming", ignoring the conflicting issues, whether members are open or defensive, atmosphere of the organisation is supportive or hostile, leadership quality, intolerance for mistakes, difference of culture, vocabularies and frame of references, status and reward for knowledge owners and belief that knowledge is prerogative to particular group. References: 1. Baba, M. (1999) Dangerous liaisons: Trust, Distrust and information technology in American work organisation, human organizations, Fall, 58,3,pp 331-346. 2. Devenport, T. & Prusak, L. (1998) How organisations manage what they know. Bostan MA: Harvard business school press. 3. Hart, P. & Saunders, C. (1997) Power and trust: critical factors in adoption and use of electronic data interchange, organisation science, Jan-Feb. 1997, vol.8. No. 1. , Pp 23-42. 4. Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1999), communication and trust in global virtual teams, organizational science, vol.10, nov-dec.1999, pp 791-815. 5. Katzenbach, J. & Smith, D. (1986), The wisdom of teams, Boston MA, Harvard business review press. 6. Katzenbach, Jon. R. & Douglas K. Smith, " The discipline of teams" Harvard business review, Mar-Apr., 1993. 7. Kramer, R. M. & Tyler T. R. (1996), Whither trust in R.M. Kramer and T.R. Tyler (eds.) Trust in organisations: Frontiers of theory and research, CA: Sage publication, Thousand oaks. 8. Margerision, C. & Macann, D. (1985) How to lead a winning team, MCB university press. 9. Mayer, R.C., David, J.H. & Schorman, F.D. (1995), "An integrative organizational trust", Academy of management journal, 20,3,pp 709-734. 10. 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