Modeling the influence of trust on work team performance

Abstract

The selection of suitable people to make up a successful work team is not a trivial decision-making process, because of the diversity and complexity of the factors that influence individual and team performance. Teams are assembled by project managers using their experience and the information they have available (although this is frequently scarce, uncertain, and dynamic) about the personal and professional characteristics of potential team members. In this paper, we introduce an agent-based model developed to support this decision-making process where a virtual team can be configured using some selected characteristics of potential team members. Fuzzy sets and fuzzy rules are used to model the interaction between team members and a given set of tasks, generating statistical information that represents possible performance by team members. More specifically, the paper focuses on the concept of trust, an important social skill that influences performance at individual (team member) and global (work team) levels. We describe the implementation of an agent-based simulation system where the user can test different team configurations to compare performance and select the best possible work team for a given project. The evaluation and validation of the model was performed through face validity and historical data validation techniques, which are based on information collected from real work teams. The results show the suitability of the model as a helpful tool in the formation and configuration of work teams for specific scenarios.