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Is Trust Always Better Than Distrust? The Potential Value Of Distrust In Newer Virtual Teams Engaged In Short-Term Decision-Making, Paul Benjamin Lowry, Ryan M. Schuetzler, Justin Scott Giboney, Thomas A. Gregory

Ryan Schuetzler

The debate on the benefits of trust or distrust in groups has generated a substantial amount of research that points to the positive aspects of trust in groups, and generally characterizes distrust as a negative group phenomenon. Therefore, many researchers and practitioners assume that trust is inherently good and distrust is inherently bad. However, recent counterintuitive evidence obtained from face-to-face (FtF) groups indicates that the opposite might be true; trust can prove detrimental, and distrust instrumental, to decision-making in groups. By extending this argument to virtual teams (VTs), we examined the value of distrust for VTs completing routine and non-routine …