Research on Trust Mechanism in Virtual Enterprises: Innovation in Trust Management Model in Network Environment

Author: Zhang Xizheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-07-01
Features: Seeking Trust Sources in Virtual Enterprises
Clearly, based on the analysis of the characteristics of trust in virtual enterprises mentioned earlier, we know that trust in virtual enterprises differs significantly from trust in real-world environments. In the virtual network environment, certain traditional supervisory and restrictive mechanisms lose their effectiveness. Therefore, it is necessary to seek new trust sources—an exchange medium that is verifiable and possesses authoritative supervisory and restrictive mechanisms to ensure the credibility and reasonable expectation of commitments. So, what can fulfill this responsibility? Due to the separation of time and space, trust in commitments in the general interactions of the online society must be transformed into trust in abstract systems. Only by establishing an abstract system that people perceive as trustworthy through daily experience can a universal relationship of mutual commitment and reasonable expectation be established in the online society. In this sense, network trust, characterized by the separation of time and space, is a "trust mechanism in an abstract system" that is linked to the institutional system in the network environment.
The "trust mechanism in an abstract system" is based on trust in the abstract system itself, specifically trust in symbolic sign systems and expert systems. Abstract systems, whether symbolic systems or expert systems, placed within the social structure, fulfill a special social structural function and maintain the order and functionality of the entire social system through the normal functioning of these functions. Therefore, what abstract systems express is essentially the commitment made by the social structure itself to all its members through its functions. Non-institutional personal commitments are guaranteed by personal integrity and are based on the experiential understanding of others, which is subjectively uncertain. In contrast, institutional commitments are secured by non-personal institutional frameworks and their objective operational mechanisms, making them objectively certain. Under conditions of temporal and spatial separation, institutional commitments can maintain the normative order, safety, and predictability of off-site interactions.
While the online society should not deny non-institutional personal commitments and their utility, the most important thing is to establish effective institutional commitments and, on this basis, institutional trust. In virtual enterprise cooperation and transactions, the trustor can still rely on traditional trust resources to identify a trustworthy third party, which may include employers, banks, doctors, governments, and others, but is not limited to these. A trustworthy third party is typically a certification authority in the real world. A certification agency with a long-standing and close relationship with the user group can better gain trust and reduce related risks in the registration and control of the group's behavior. Like the reputation system in the real world, the diversity and cross-linking of certification systems are beneficial to the development and expansion of trust relationships.
Although trust can be transferred in many current systems—for example, the trustor trusts the certification agency, and the certification agency trusts the users, thus the trustor trusts the users—trust is diluted if this trust chain extends too far. Each transaction poses a certain risk to one party, so the risk increases proportionally with the number of transactions. If every member of a group acts in the same way