A CASE OF TRUST İN WORK TEAMS IN THE CONTEXT OF COLLECTIVIST AND INDIVIDUALIST CULTURES

Abstract

The concept of trust, that is an interpersonal issue, is a popular one in social sciences which has multi sided and multidimensional. Apart from inter personal level, the current concept can be approached at team, group and organizational levels as well. Moreover, it is also emphasised that trust is one of the key elements of obtaining required performance for the survival of organizations. Besides, it is also uttered that trust has a vital role in teams which has been emerged for the sake of getting more efficiency in the organizational operations and has been widely used owing to its success. Yet, the process of gathering, working and operating stages of teams that comprise of members whose talents and capabilities are differentiated, can be varied culturally and some cultural elements can influence some inner processes of teams. In that sense, it can be easily asserted that the concept of trust among team members is one of the issues that can be considered among these issues that can impact teams’ inner processes. In this direction, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the concept of trust among team members through the glass of cultural differences. In addition, the descriptive and explanatory role of inner and outer group issues, which is originated from cross cultural studies, is also mentioned in the paper. In this study, the classification of Hofstede (1984) that is contained 4 dimensions (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity-femininity and collectivism-individualism) is used. The subject of how the different cultural characteristics can influence the trust among team members is attempted to be reflected and revealed by theoretical propositions. Lastly, it is predicted and expected that this study, which can be considered as a pioneer one concerning the topics and issues that are scrutinized, will enlighten and inspire forthcoming empirical studies.