Cheap talk, cooperation, and trust in global software engineering

In our studies of global software engineering (GSE) teams, we found that informal, non-work-related conversations are positively associated with trust. Seeking to use novel analytical techniques to more carefully investigate this phenomenon, we described these non-work-related conversations by adapting the economics literature concept of “ cheap talk, ” and studied it using Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT). More specifically, we modified the classic Stag-hunt game and analyzed the dynamics in a fixed population setting (an abstraction of a GSE team). Doing so, we were able to demonstrate how cheap talk over the Internet ( e-cheap talk ) was powerful enough to facilitate the emergence of trust and improve the probability of cooperation where the punishment for uncooperative behavior is comparable to the cost of the cheap talk . To validate the results of our theoretical approach, we conducted two empirical case studies that analyzed the logged IRC development discussions of Apache Lucene ( http://lucene.apache. org/ ) and Chromium OS ( http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os ) using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The results provide general support to the theoretical propositions. We discuss our findings and the theoretical and practical implications to GSE collaborations and research.