She built trust in the di­git­al eco­nomy

When Sirkka Jarvenpaa began researching digital collaboration in the 1990s, the world looked very different from today.

Bryan Adams topped the charts, Miss Marple was solving murders on television, and only very few people had access to the internet. Windows was still mostly something you opened to let in fresh air.

“Several fellow researchers thought I was wasting my time studying virtual teams and advised me to change course. ‘Why would people trust someone they don’t know and can only exchange very short text messages with?’ they would say,” recalls Sirkka Jarvenpaa.

That would turn out to be a very good investment in her research career. In 1993, the World Wide Web was opened to the public, and e-commerce began to flourish.

Large companies in particular were beginning to see the potential of virtual collaboration across borders, and this is where Sirkka Jarvenpaa’s research became central. Because how do you buy from - and collaborate safely with - people you have never met?

How do you build trust at a distance?

One of Sirkka Jarvenpaa’s most important contributions was her research on global virtual teams.

In her research, she showed that trust can arise quickly between people who collaborate only digitally and at a distance.

But she also showed that trust is fragile, and that it depends on how the team communicates.

For example, trust depends on communicating clearly and regularly, showing engagement, and creating a sense of safe and predictable contact within the team.

Digital collaboration only works when people are actually able to build relationships, shared rhythms, and a sense that they can rely on one another.

This was an important contribution to both research and practice.

Today, that may sound obvious. But long before Teams meetings, hybrid work, and global project groups became part of everyday life, she helped define what it takes for digital collaboration to work.

An “Accidental PhD”

But how did Sirkka end up researching a new niche long before the need for it was clear?

Sirkka Jarvenpaa came from a  small family business in Finland selling flowers and vegetables. That is why she originally wanted to study International Business.

“When I got the opportunity to study International Business on a scholarship in the United States in the late 1970s, I did not hesitate a second to venture from my small Finnish village.”

Sirkka Jarvenpaa began at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, USA, but was disappointed to find that most of the curriculum focused on macroeconomics. That made her question her employability after a bachelor’s degree. 

She therefore added Accounting as a study area, but did not feel fully at home there. In the end, she found her way into Information Systems, which was part of the same faculty, to complement international business. 

“While finishing my MBA at the University of Minnesota, I ran out of money and took a job as a teaching assistant. While being a teaching assistant, a professor persuaded me to apply for a PhD program at the University of Minnesota. At the time, getting a PhD. seemed easier than getting a ‘real job’,” she says.

“I usually say that I did an ‘accidental PhD.’”

She helped explain why people dared to trust online cooperation

Sirkka Jarvenpaa’s choice in focusing on information systems and international business would prove lucky in more than one way.

Later in her research career, she made another important contribution to the study of online trust.

In the article Consumer Trust in an Internet Store: A Cross-Cultural Validation, she and her co-authors examined what makes consumers in different countries trust an online store.

The study showed that trust plays a major role in whether consumers are willing to buy online, and that factors such as perceived reputation and size influence whether an internet store is seen as trustworthy. The article also showed that this pattern could be found across countries.

Her research helped demonstrate that digital business is not only about price, speed, and convenience. It is also about credibility. Users need a reason to trust the systems that companies build.

That insight now extends far beyond online stores — to platforms, AI solutions, and the growing questions around data sharing, privacy, and protection.

A message to young researchers: Stand firm on your beliefs

If Sirkka Jarvenpaa were to pass on one message, it would be that young researchers must have room to pursue questions that may not seem useful here and now.

What seems obvious to study today — virtual teams, e-commerce, data sharing, privacy, and digital trust — was far from self-evident when she began.

That is exactly why, she believes, it is important to support researchers who insist on working on topics that have not yet had their breakthrough.

As she puts it:

Some of the most important research questions are precisely the ones whose significance only becomes clear later, she says.

Honorary Doctor at CBS

Today, Sirkka Jarvenpaa is Professor and Endowed Chair in the Department of Information, Risk, and Operations Management at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin.

And on 20 March 2026, she will add honorary doctor to that title when she gives her honorary doctorate lecture at CBS.

The lecture is titled From Dial-Up to AI-Driven Collaboration: Is Trust Working for Us, or Are We Working for Trust? and centers on the questions that have shaped her research for decades.

It is also a recognition of her research, which early on gave language to something that has since become decisive for the entire digital economy: technology only creates value if people dare to trust it - and one another.