Trust Through a Screen: How Technology Impacts Trust Building in Hybrid Teams

This paper explores how hybrid teams build trust in a virtual space via technology platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom. While email and video conferencing platforms, in particular Cisco’s WebEx, made hybrid teams possible before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, remote work became widely accepted and more prevalent post pandemic (Wontorczyk & Rożnowski, 2022). This paper aims to explore the lived experiences of full-time corporate office workers and how technology as a tool either helped to build or decrease trust within a hybrid work team. Seven semi-structured individual interviews were conducted via Zoom and one semi-structured individual interview was conducted in-person. As a result of the grounded theory thematic analysis (open coding, axial coding, and selective coding) seven themes emerged and were either aligned to cognitive or affective trust. The themes aligned with cognitive trust in hybrid work environments include accountability/work quality, knowledge sharing/expertise and willingness to learn, touch points/check-ins, availability and visibility, and issues using mainstream technology platforms. Casual and authentic self and psychological safety were linked to affective trust in hybrid work environments. The finding suggests that technology platforms are a tool that can be utilized in trust building process within hybrid work environments

Author

• Chung, Nicole Y

Language

• English

Keyword

• trust
• team buildilng
• hybrid team
• technology platforms

Date created

• 2025

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Communication Management

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Shin, Youngju

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/tt44pn71s