A QUESTION OF TRUST: COGNITIVE CAPITALISM, DIGITAL REPUTATION ECONOMY, AND ONLINE LABOR MARKETS

Abstract

1.IntroductionThe possession of a satisfactory reputation facilitates the attainment of professional results and returns. Reputation is a resource that may be catalyzed and that persists with the worker as a capital that is invested, transacted or admin istered (Ionescu, 2016a) in a variety of circumstances, constituting the social capital of a digital community where networks of relationships are regulated and preserved in latterly mediated manners and via heterogeneous means. Reputation operates as the antecedent for confidence to be established throughout a socio-economic environment where participants are quasi-strangers undertaking economic activities that predicate on, and clarify value through (Nica, 2017), the presence of a social connection. Trust is a characteristic of social interplay implied by a particular attribute of interconnectedness. The actuality of a reputation tie can materialize separately from the complementation of such a relation. (Gandini)2.The Collective Role of Reputation as the Starting Place for Instituting Trust among Quasi-strangersTrust entails social interplay to a greater degree in comparison with reputation. The latter may not presuppose mutuality, rather more temporary and evanescent, somehow self-oriented shared requirements. The role of trust within specialized networks of knowledge employees is furthered by reputation which serves as the starting place for the fabric of confidence among quasistrangers (Lazaroiu, 2016) in addition to a feasible asset influential for its accomplishment via impermanent and mediated types of social interplay for productive aims. The level of trust between the participants necessitated with the intention of maintaining economic transactions (Popescu and Bitoiu, 2017) is enabled by reputation and designed systems for reputation assessment. Confidence among quasi-strangers may be inculcated when, although mutual benefit is nonexistent (Popescu, 2017), reputation functions as a commonly perceived indispensable asset leveraging market-like interplay. The recognition of one's professional expertise is organized throughout diverse manners of social interaction (Mihaila, 2016a), and translates into economic earnings on the justification of it: (a) appraisals on an employee's performance and favorable outcome are being regulated in the knowledge industry via a social logic in conformity with perceptions; and, (b) there is an issue of trust and reliability that is situated at the center of the economic operation of such environments as labor markets, and networks with the idea of social capital. Reputation is a type of immaterial money to spend within networks such that reliable conduct may be required (Nica, 2016), being a kind of capital, a partly responsible asset in maintaining economic transactions: it is related to each knowledge employee's market position, and is governed by the efficiency in obtaining jobs throughout a multi-dimensional personal arrangement of professional relationships. …