How Emergent Roles and Structures Create Trust in Hastily Formed Interorganizational Teams

Abstract

Many activities, from disaster response to project management, require cooperation among people from multiple organizations who initially lack interpersonal relationships and trust. On entering interorganizational settings, preexisting identities and expectations, along with emergent social roles and structures, may all influence trust between colleagues. To sort out these effects, we collected timelagged data from three cohorts of military MBA students, representing 2,224 directed dyads, shortly after they entered graduate school. Dyads who shared organizational identity, boundary-spanning roles, and similar network positions (structural equivalence) were likely to have stronger professional ties and greater trust.