Abstract:

Studies on team management have increasingly focused on team behavioral processes and its dynamic mechanisms. Among them, trust-building has become a frontier research area in industrial and organizational psychology. Previous research showed that the trust among team members is a key condition for high performance work teams. Trust building and its processes are affected by various factors such as individual value-orientation, interpersonal ability, team leadership styles, and mental model of team sharing. More in-depth research, however, is needed on team trust-building and -development. Using the image theory, this study systematically examined trust-building process and its key characteristics among team members in order to explore its image decision mechanisms. This study employed an experimental simulation method using a between-subject factorial design with two conditions (high goal conflict under individual goals vs low goal conflict under team goals). Network experimental simulation methodology was used. Twenty teams were randomly assigned to perform team tasks of investment under one goal condition. The results of these experiments showed that trust decision among team members was an image decision and it showed a rejection threshold. In the process of trust building, dimensions of ability and integrity were more important than kindness under both ideal and current images. The team members made their compatibility testing between ideal images and current images in order to make their trust decision judgment. In this dynamic process, the compatibility perception played a partial intervening effect and the image decision mechanism was established

Key words: teams, trust building, image decision mechanism, image theory