The Role of Infrastructure in Managing Trust Within the Conceptual Organization

This section discusses how aspects of the conceptual organization are implemented and how the implementations appear to shape, and are shaped by, cognitive and affective trust within the organization.

Organizational Structure and Membership Selection

The organizational structure of the conceptual organization observed in this case study includes a director who sets the overall prioritization for the Center and is responsible for leading the strategic vision and planning process. In addition, the Director for this Center takes a lead in organizing the research as well as the dissemination of the research in real time by organizing the center-wide group meetings. As Director, this person also leads the interactions with the external stakeholder groups, such as the national funding agency, an external advisory board, affiliate university administrations and the media. In addition to these responsibilities, the Director teaches and conducts research at his local university.

This Center also has a Co-Director and a Deputy Director. The Co-Director is a close research collaborator with the Director and is essentially interchangeable with the Director in many functions. The Co-Director's primary responsibility is financial leadership and leadership in strategic planning. The Co-Director is also the leader of the external industrial affiliates group and conducts research. Outside the context of the Center, he directs a nonprofit foundation.

The Deputy Director is a position created explicitly to help with the numerous administration requirements associated with the Center. The Deputy Director plays an organizational lead position for the strategic plan and its implementation and accountability. The Deputy Director is also responsible for leading the generation of the annual report and overall compliance with the cooperative agreement between the universities and the funding agency. In a supporting role, the Deputy Director also assists with the numerous outreach programs from the Center and represents the Center at external venues on numerous occasions.

The directors collaborated with each other previously, are personal friends, and exhibit high levels of cognitive and affective trust towards each other. They share in the responsibility of creating and communicating the vision of the Center, together managing cognitive trust within the organization and with external stakeholders. This helps to alleviate common burnout, which often leads to a degradation of management's ability to create and maintain a Center's vision, vibrant research program and perceptions of cognitive trust.

To further broaden participation and trust in Center management, the directors are assisted by a management team that includes a site coordinator for each participating university, a coordinator of collaborative efforts, a higher education outreach coordinator, a kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) education outreach coordinator, a technical program committee and an office manager. Site coordinators handle location-specific administrative issues, ranging from reserving a videoconference room for weekly meetings to distributing allocated budget funds. The coordinator of collaborative efforts manages socio-technical activities to support collaboration within the Center and coordinates social science research done in the Center. The higher education and K-12 outreach coordinators oversee the educational outreach activities done by Center members and their staff. The technical program committee (consisting of a lead scientist from each location and the Center's Director, Co-director and Deputy Director) provides input regarding natural science research and development.

The participation of representatives from each physical location provides ongoing dialogue about challenges, progress, perceptions and ways of working at each location, which is important for building and maintaining cognitive trust. It facilitates learning about different ways of working and collaborative problem solving when members from different locations suggest how practices at their location may solve problems at other locations. For example, one team member suggested a possible solution to a colleague at a different location:

Another thing you can do…to magnify your undergraduate help is that you can have undergraduates getting paid for a certain amount of their research but then getting credit for a certain amount, so that you only have to pay for part of it…We pay [our undergraduate students], but…we also want them to take two semesters of [research credits].

Similarly, the participation of K-12 outreach, social science, minority and technical program coordinators on the management team facilitated coordination and collaboration, helping to manage cognitive trust among these diverse domains.

Scientists and students in the Center have a primary affiliation with a university at which they are physically located. They became members by proposing and being asked to propose research projects and activities that would help the Center achieve its vision, mission and goals. The process included a preliminary proposal in which faculty were requested to provide a title and a brief statement of research objectives (six to eight lines in length). The technical program committee provided feedback to the faculty on their preliminary proposals. The preliminary proposals were:

A mechanism for earlier dialogue…The benefits are…to attempt to avoid excess overlap [between projects];…to identify opportunities for collaboration…not only within a given university, but also between universities;…to identify any unmet needs.

The proposals were reviewed and discussed by members of the Center's management team. Primary criteria used to evaluate the proposals included: fit to strategic plan, potential impact and scientific merit. Secondary criteria included: collaboration plan, K-12 outreach record and plan, and outside funds attracted. It is interesting to note that a detailed work plan is not requested, however, a collaboration plan is requested. Membership is based on high cognitive trust.

Power

Boulding (1990) describes three types of organizational power: destructive, economic and integrative. Destructive power, the power to destroy things, can be used as a prelude to production, where things are destroyed or altered to make way for production, and for carrying out a threat. An example of destructive organizational power is the firing of employees who are seen as resisting change in an organization. Economic power is used in all organizations. It involves the creation and acquisition of economic goods, including intellectual property, through production, exchange, taxation or theft. Integrative power involves the capacity to build organizations, inspire loyalty, to bind people together and to develop legitimacy. It has a productive and destructive aspect. In a negative sense it can create enemies and alienate people. All organizations have some integrative power or they could not survive. Some, however, rely on integrative power more than others; these include religious organizations, political movements, volunteer organizations and clubs. Their existence and growth are influenced by the extent to which the objectives of these organizations match the dynamic value structures within a larger population.

The conceptual organization appears to use a combination of integrative, economic and destructive power, however, their primary source of power appears to be integrative. They solicit funding and participation based on their vision, mission and goals. They attract funding from corporations, government agencies and other institutions by convincing them that their vision, mission and goals are valid and achievable. They cannot promise an economic return on investment, although they offer some hope to funding corporations that they will effectively educate students who may become future employees and generate patents and other knowledge that may have economic value. Conceptual organizations attract scientists and students similarly, i.e., they attract scientists and students by convincing them that the organization's vision, mission and goals are exciting and can provide great personal satisfaction. It assumes and requires cognitive and limited affective distrust.

The Center in this case study used integrative power in developing its vision, mission and goals. This was also a mechanism to increase cognitive trust. For example, when describing the process of developing a vision, the deputy director commented:

It's intended to be an inclusive process. We've included most of the [faculty] here in the Center in this process. Certainly our external advisory board had a part to play. It's iterative…We made our first draft of the vision, mission and goals, and reviewed those with [the faculty]…We then reviewed those with [industrial partners] and with our external advisory board. We got their input, what they thought we should be doing in a strategic direction…we integrated these comments.

The Center augmented integrative power with economic power, in that they provide some funding to scientists and students. For example, in the Center scientists typically receive one month's summer salary, funding for one graduate student or 50% funding for a post-doctoral fellow, up to $4,000 for supplies, and $500 for travel. ^[1] However, these amounts are by themselves not necessarily sufficient to build economic-based trust, i.e., to attract and retain high-caliber scientists who often receive government and corporate funding in much larger amounts. A vision that scientists are willing to support is also required. Cognitive trust facilitates belief in the vision.

As in any organization, destructive power is used when members do not meet expectations or keep commitments, i.e., when cognitive distrust emerges. This was manifest in the Center through decisions not to continue funding several scientists whose work was judged not in alignment with the Center's vision, mission and goals. For example, during a meeting to decide funding, participants supported and criticized proposals using comments such as:

This [proposed project] was not the lowest on my list, but I really miss the connection to objectives, goals, mission, etc., here. I could not see where this is going to lead.

These decisions, however, were reached through integrative power and were based on cognitive trust among the technical program committee members. The review was done collaboratively with the technical program committee, consisting of a lead scientist from each location and the Center's Director, Co-director and Deputy Director.

Thus, through interaction with faculty and collaboration among management team members, cognitive trust and distrust were enacted through integrative and destructive powers.

Information and Communications Technology

Because a conceptual organization is geographically distributed, it must utilize information and communications technology (ICT) as a mechanism to realize its vision and mission, or incur expensive monetary and temporal travel costs. In the Center studied, this has meant using traditional information and communications technology, such as the telephone, fax, mail and e-mail, in ways typical of other R&D organizations and scientific disciplines (e.g., Daft & Lengel, 1984). It has also meant using newer technologies, such as video-conferencing and web pages, in innovative ways to support the organization's vision, facilitate collaboration, and manage cognitive and affective trust and distrust.

Video-conferencing is used for center-wide meetings and weekly research meetings. Center-wide meetings are held relatively infrequently (e.g., once every six to eight months); these meetings include all members at all universities and have been used to share information among all Center members. For example, a center-wide meeting was held that introduced the Center's mission, organizational structure and center-wide activities several months after the Center was established. Research meetings are held weekly; all Center members are invited to attend these meetings, however, students are required to attend. Each meeting typically lasts one and one-half to two hours, and includes 20 to 30 Center members. During this time, students and post-doctoral fellows present and discuss their work.

The format and technology used in these meetings have evolved over time. New social protocols to compensate for constraints imposed by the technology, and operations protocols to help reduce technical problems were developed and implemented working with Center members and technical staff (Sonnenwald et al., 2002). Today these meetings increase members' awareness of one another's work and progress towards the vision, and, ideally, positively influence cognitive trust.

One drawback to these meetings was their formal nature, negatively impacting affective trust. Students commented that the introduction of video-conferencing, a large audience and PowerPoint™ slides meant they needed to spend more time to prepare their presentations. They felt their presentations had to be as formal as if they were presenting at a conference, and this formality made them hesitant to discuss work in progress and challenges they were facing. Several things have contributed to reducing the formality and increasing the interactive nature of these meetings. First, faculty encouraged students to view their presentations as learning opportunities. Second, the directors and key students introduced informal aspects into their presentations, e.g., they used the drawing features of the electronic board to modify their slides in real time. Third, a new practice of having non-work communication before a presentation was initiated. In particular, the facilitator of each meeting asks each presenter several questions about their favorite activities and how they came to be at the Center. Interpersonal communication has also been shown to increase affective trust among distributed team members (Rocco, Finholt, Hofer, & Herbsleb, 2000) and facilitate collaboration (Sonnenwald, 1996), a by-product of cognitive trust.

Small group project meetings are held on an as-needed basis among scientists and students who are collaborating on a project. These meetings were typically held face-to-face and/or via audio-conferencing. Technology is currently being installed to provide video-conferencing and shared electronic whiteboards for small group project meetings. It will be interesting to investigate the impact of the technology on cognitive and affective trust.

Face-to-face interaction is traditionally recommended to augment interaction mediated by technology (e.g., Handy, 1995; Olson & Olson, 2001; Rocco et al., 2000), and Center members meet face-to-face at conferences held by professional organizations. They also occasionally visit members working at other locations, however, such travel is primarily limited to those working in the same state. This may limit the growth of affective trust.

A website was created to share Center news, expectations and resources among Center members and to communicate information about the Center to stakeholders. The content of the website is evolving and currently includes: the Center's vision statement, contact information, annual reports, call for proposals, virtual tours of lab facilities, Center meeting schedules, directory of Center members, personal web pages of Center members, a news bulletin that contains copies of press releases and announcements of awards and other recognition received by members, and forms to be used by members, such as a confidentiality agreement. This type of content can help form a shared identity and help initiate affective trust across distances (Rocco et al., 2000).

The website also contains pointers to resources that provide work, career and personal assistance to members, such as information about lab safety, suppliers, conferences, job interview process and apartment hunting services. This type of information supports a general anonymous mentoring function, allowing Center members (as well as the general public) to anonymously find information to assist in their careers and personal life. Thus, these pages have the possibility of positively influencing feelings of cognitive and affective trust toward the Center.

Geographic distance can hinder the growth of cognitive and affective trust because it limits the opportunities to observe others' behavior, and observation mediated by ICT is limited by the technology's functionality. Innovative applications of the technology and changes in behavior appear necessary to help overcome these constraints and manage trust.

^[1]During the initial start-up year, funding for purchases of specialized scientific equipment was also provided on an as-needed basis.