Abstract
Virtual teams are groups of geographically and/or temporally dispersed individuals brought together via information and telecommunication technologies. Globalization of the marketplace makes such teams the primary operating units needed to achieve competitive advantage in this ever-changing business environment. Knowledge sharing requires communication between various employees, geographical separation makes it a challenge to build trust and share knowledge effectively in the virtual teams. This study examined the relationship between knowledge sharing, trust, and antecedents of trust. Our results indicated that knowledge sharing is positively influenced by propensity to trust, leadership, communication technology and trust. Trust is positively influenced by propensity to trust, ethic, integrity and benevolence. In virtual teams, ability seems not to be important factors that influence knowledge sharing and trust building. The effect of team’s characteristics on trust is not significant. Instead, leadership was positively associated with members’ characteristics (ability, propensity to trust, ethic, integrity and benevolence). We argue that the leadership affects the trust indirectly through the members’ characteristics.