Communication,Proximity,and Trust in Distributed Command and Control

Abstract

This paper discusses an empirical study of the effects of communication mode and trust on performance in a distributed command and control task. The study was motivated by the US Army's plan to transition from conventional ground forces to the Objective Force Warrior, an army of autonomous, dispersed individuals. We begin with a review of this change in organizational structure in the light of social impact theory. We then develop hypotheses relating trust, proximity, and modes of communication to team performance and discuss our laboratory experiment. Trust interacts significantly with both communication and proximity. The failure to reciprocate trust appears to make it more difficult for teams to communicate and to work face-to-face. If this result generalizes, it may have profound implications for the design of distributed work groups.