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Intermediation for trust-enabling networked decentralized exchange systems

Published: 20 September 2006 Publication History

Abstract

We compare two distinct (and, apparently, mutually exclusive) models of collaboration support-mechanisms, and evaluate their applicability to Internet-based economic exchanges. The first model is grounded on a bottom-up approach where decision-making is completely decentralized and global-order self-organizes out of multiplex local interactions among numerous and interdependent agents. The second model focuses on centralized, hierarchical institutions that coordinate and regulate individual behaviour to conform, at higher level of aggregation, to the system functional-requirements. In the first model, socially efficient exchange outcomes are possible but problematic, and eventual cooperation can be said to be 'trust-based', in contrast to the 'contract-based' solution of the second model. We claim that both models have significant drawbacks, and we propose a third model which grounds on the concept of 'intermediation' a semi-decentralized approach to the problem of cooperation, which envisages in a proper mix of identity-management and trust-support mechanisms the key-tools for the emergence of an efficient and feasible trade-off between trust and control in complex socio/technical systems.

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  • (2016)LAYERSProceedings of the Annual Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists10.1145/2987491.2987528(1-8)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2016
  • (2015)Creating trust in self-service technology environments: The role of institutional governance structures2015 Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET)10.1109/PICMET.2015.7273252(601-611)Online publication date: Aug-2015
  1. Intermediation for trust-enabling networked decentralized exchange systems

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    ECCE '06: Proceedings of the 13th Eurpoean conference on Cognitive ergonomics: trust and control in complex socio-technical systems
    September 2006
    174 pages
    ISBN:9783906509235
    DOI:10.1145/1274892
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 20 September 2006

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    Author Tags

    1. contracts
    2. control
    3. reputation
    4. signals
    5. trust

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    • (2016)LAYERSProceedings of the Annual Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists10.1145/2987491.2987528(1-8)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2016
    • (2015)Creating trust in self-service technology environments: The role of institutional governance structures2015 Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET)10.1109/PICMET.2015.7273252(601-611)Online publication date: Aug-2015

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