Abstract

Swift starting action teams (STATs) are increasingly prevalent in organiza-tions, and the development of trust is often a critical issue for their effective-ness. However, current theory and research do not provide a clear picture regarding how trust toward the team (i.e., the team as the target) is devel-oped in these settings. The primary contribution of this article is to present a theoretical framework describing how individual-level trust toward one’s team is developed in STAT contexts. This article integrates several existing trust theories into one comprehensive context-specific multilevel theory of how trust develops in STATs from cognitive, affective, behavioral, and contextual perspectives. This framework furthers our understanding of the unique an-tecedents of initial trust in STATs, how trust attitudes are adjusted over the short amount of time the team interacts, and how the team context influences this developmental process.