Impact of Communication, Trust and Knowledge Sharing on Employee Performance in Virtual Teams of a Leading Information Technology Company in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to contribute to the expansion of understanding of virtual team performance through communication, trust, and knowledge sharing. It provides practitioners and managers with insights into strategies they can utilize to enhance the virtual team performance of the organization. Although the relationship between communication, trust, and knowledge sharing and employee performance is established in western literature, very few studies have examined these with employee performance in virtual teams in the Sri Lankan context, especially in the IT industry. This study explored the relationship and examined the influence of those variables among employees who work in a software company in Sri Lanka. This study is deductive (theory-based). This research was conducted using a survey research strategy and quantitative research methods. ABC Company software engineers were chosen as the study's population. A simple sampling technique was used to calculate the sample size. Accordingly, the sample size was 76 observations and used primary data as a data source. Data collection was done through a self-administered questionnaire. A Google form was created and distributed to collect data. The number of employees who responded was 74 among 76 employees. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), version 23.0, was used as a tool for data analysis, and both descriptive and inferential statistics, namely correlation and regression, were used to analyze the data. The results indicate that communication, trust, and knowledge sharing have significant direct effects on employee performance.