A study of the relationship between trust and the effective communication of information within project teams of large high tech organizations

This study investigates the effects trust has on the truthfulness of communications and its effectiveness within a project team. The research focuses specifically on organizational context, the situational forces that exist within this context, and the effects they have on trust within project teams. A review of previous studies of trust as it relates to human and organizational behavior is conducted, a definition of the context and situational forces of large, high tech organizations is provided, and an analysis of the information gathered through surveying various project team members and Project Managers is completed. The results indicate organizational contexts facilitating little trust between project team members and Managers are causing two significant inconsistencies. First, the information project team members claim they are willing to provide versus the information actually being communicated. Second, the information project team members are communicating versus the information Project Managers believe they are receiving. The complications encountered while soliciting project teams exposed a barrier in resolving these contradictions: Project Managers do not acknowledge the existence of such discrepancies let alone value the importance of resolving them. The study concludes by exposing the prevalence of trust issues among project teams as well as providing recommendations for management to successfully increase team trust to improve the functionality of the organizational context to ultimately increase the truthfulness and therefore effectiveness of communication throughout their corporations. Recommendations for future research are provided as well.

Department dc:contributor.department

System Design and Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Scherer, Alyson

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael Davies.

• System Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/44703

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/44703