Trust Norms Research Articles

A metadata-based architecture for user-centered data accountability

Data is rapidly changing how companies operate, offering them new business opportunities as they generate increasingly sophisticated insights from the analysis of an ever-increasing pool of information. Businesses have clearly moved beyond a focus on data collection to data use, but users have an inadequate model of notice and consent at the point of data collection to limit inappropriate use. An interoperable context-aware metadata-based architecture that allows permissions and policies to be bound to data, and is flexible enough to allow for changing trust norms, help balance the tension between users and business, satisfy regulators’ desire for increased transparency and greater accountability, and still enable data to flow in ways that provide value to all participants in the ecosystem.

Guanxias a complex adaptive system: definition, description and underlying principals

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to critically review the extantguanxiliterature to identify the major inconsistencies in the wayguanxiis currently conceptualized. The authors develop a conceptualization ofguanxiwhich viewsguanxias a complex adaptive system.Design/methodology/approach– Electronic databases were queried for the keywordguanxi. This study offers an extensive review of the current literature, highlighting four major inconsistencies, namely, the breadth, linguistic-cultural depth, temporality and level of the conceptualization and analyses ofguanxi.Findings– In reviewing the extant literature, the authors find four levels of inconsistency that contribute to a lack of clarity in the wayguanxiis conceptualized. They defineguanxias a complex adaptive system involving a dynamic formed by the strategic establishing, evolving, utilizing and maintaining of personal relationships based on social norms of trust and reciprocal obligation unique to the Chinese culture.Research limitations/implications– This approach has the advantage of capturing the dynamic and emerging nature ofguanxiover time, while encompassing the underlying principles of the evolving networks as part of the definition.Practical implications– The authors' new definition makes it easier to explain to people of other cultures. The appropriate level of breadth allowsguanxito be distinguished from associated concepts. This provides guidance for non-Chinese people to help understandguanxiand avoid cross-cultural misunderstandings and conflict.Originality/value– Having a clear and inclusive definition of the cultural practice ofguanxiwill integrate the growing literature and theoretical dialogue surrounding the phenomena. This will allow for consistent study ofguanxiand its underlying principles, making integration of the various studies conceptually easier.

Shared Societies and Armed Conflict: Costs, Inequality and the Benefits of Peace

SummaryThis paper examines how the relationship between economic exclusion, inequality, conflict and violence shape the goal of establishing shared societies. The chapter discusses how this impact is largely determined by the emergence and organisation of social and political institutions in areas of violent conflict. Two areas of institutional change are central to understanding the relationship between armed conflict and shared societies. The first is the change caused by armed conflict on social interactions and norms of trust and cooperation. The second is the influence exercised by informal mediators, informal service providers and informal systems of governance – often controlled by non‐state armed actors – that emerge from processes of violence and are prevalent in areas of armed conflict. These forms of institutional transformation are central to understanding how societies may be able to restrict the use of violence as a strategic way of resolving social conflicts and how to transition from violence‐ridden to shared societies.

Historical Sources of Institutional Trajectories in Economic Development: China, Japan and Korea Compared

This essay first provides a game-theoretic, endogenous view of institutions, and then applies the idea to identify sources of institutional trajectories of economic development in China, Japan, and Korea. It stylizes the Malthusian-phase of the East Asian economies as a peasant-based economy in which small-size conjugal families self-managed their working times between farming on small plots - leased or owned - and domestic manufacturing for personal consumption and markets. It then compares institutional arrangements across these economies that sustained otherwise-similar economies. It characterizes the varied nature of the political states of Qing China, Tokugawa Japan, and Yi Korea by focusing on the way in which agricultural taxes were enforced. It also identifies different patterns of social norms of trust that were institutional complements/substitutes to the political states. Finally, it traces the path-dependent transformations of these state-norm combinations along subsequent transitions to post-Malthusian phases of economic growth in the respective economies.

Social Capital in Romanian Old People: Meanings and Opportunities for Health

Romanian pensioners are among the poorest in the European Union, making them a vulnerable group in terms of health and well-being. Social capital could act as a buffer and protect old people from health inequalities. Although the percentage of old persons has increased in Romania, little is known about their social capital, namely their social networks, their engagement in the community, their perceptions of residential areas and norms of trust and reciprocity. The present study set out to explore the structure and meanings of social capital in Romanian old people, namely the structural, cognitive and behavioural aspects of social capital in old Romanians, as well as the linking, bonding and bridging dimensions of social capital. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 men and 6 women, aged 60 to 69. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. All in all, Romanian pensioners display a lack of linking and bridging social capital. The most important social structure is the family, which provides both emotional and financial support. Norms of trust and reciprocity function only within the family but not the community. One of the main themes was lack of trust in the community and state institutions and reluctance to engage in community affairs as this is perceived to be the role of younger people. Rural areas are perceived as friendlier and more trustworthy and seen as an ideal residential area. Starting from these findings, interventions can be designed to increase linking, bridging and bonding social capital in old persons and create age-friendly environments.

Social capital, homeless young people and the family

Drawing on ethnographic data from a study on homeless youth, this article examines the relationship between young people and their families through the concept of social capital. The author argues that the lack of family as a source of social capital for homeless youth is a central factor that contributes to young people's homelessness. It presents evidence that shows that the families of homeless youth do not provide a source of social capital and this leads to young people exploring other options of support that lead to and reinforce their homelessness. Yet, many young people who have experienced homelessness have a resilient connection to their family. I propose that for a relationship, in this instance ‘the family’, to constitute social capital they need to fulfil three components that constitute social capital: (1) contact with a group of people (or a person) considered family, (2) this family must have access to valued resources (such as to economic, cultural and/or social capital) and (3) have shared norms of trust and reciprocity. Considering these three components provide insights into the diverse factors that lead a young person to homelessness and have implications for policy and practice.

Social norms and trust among strangers

We study the development of a social norm of trust and reciprocity among a group of strangers via the “contagious strategy” as defined in Kandori (1992). Over an infinite horizon, the players anonymously and randomly meet each other and play a binary trust game. In order to provide the investors with proper incentives to follow the contagious strategy, there is a sufficient condition that requires that there exists an outside option for the investors. Moreover, the investorsʼ payoff from the outside option must converge to the payoff from trust and reciprocity as the group size goes to infinity. We show that this sufficient condition is also a necessary condition to sustain any sequential equilibrium in which the trustees adopt the contagious strategy. Our results imply that a contagious equilibrium only supports trust if trust contributes almost nothing to the investorsʼ payoffs.

How to ameliorate negative effects of violent video games on cooperation: Play it cooperatively in a team

The present research tests the idea that playing a team-player video game in which players work together as teammates and assist each other in achieving a common goal ameliorates the negative effects of violent video game play on cooperative behavior. In fact, two studies revealed that, relative to a single-player mode, playing a cooperative team-player violent video game increased cooperation in a decision dilemma task. Importantly, cooperative behavior generalized across targets in that the decision dilemma was played with a partner who was not the video game play partner. Mediation analyses revealed that cooperative team-play promoted feelings of cohesion, which activated trust norms, which in turn increased cooperative behavior.

Historical Sources of Institutional Trajectories in Economic Development: China, Japan, and Korea Compared

This essay provides a game-theoretic, endogenous view of institutions, and then applies the idea to identify the sources of institutional trajectories of economic development in China, Japan, and Korea. It stylizes the Malthusian-phase of East Asian economies as peasant-based economies in which small families allocated their working time between farming on small plots— leased or owned—and handcrafting for personal consumption and markets. It then compares institutional arrangements across these economies that sustained otherwise similar economies. It characterizes the varied nature of the political states of Qing China, Tokugawa Japan, and Yi Korea by focusing on the way in which agricultural taxes were enforced. It also identifies different patterns of social norms of trust that were institutional complements to, or substitutes for, political states. Finally, it traces the path-dependent transformations of these state-norm combinations along subsequent transitions to post-Malthusian phases of economic growth in the respective economies.

Lessons from The Cultural and Political Economy of Recovery

Introduction Hurricane Katrina's arrival at Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005 was only first in a chain of events that would change face of city for years to come. Between dramatic beating from storm and second wave of damage from broken levee, communities throughout city suffered enormous damage. Destruction to property was estimated to total between $125 and $165 billion while 270,000 homes were ruined and 1,600 lives were lost (Chamlee-Wright 2010: 1). Ks Emily Chamlee-Wright's The Cultural and Political Economy of Recover. demonstrates, responses of communities within New Orleans in days and months immediately following disaster played an important role in determining how and indeed if these devastated communities would recover. (1) At theoretical level Chamlee-Wright's book to better understand nature of relationship between market behavior and cultural context within which exchange takes place. For this particular endeavor Chamlee-Wright borrows both methods and insights from anthropology, sociology, and economics to ask question of how cultural context of various New Orleans communities affected market processes and social order. Her primary empirical tool is an extensive face-to-face interview process that enables Chamlee-Wright to gather, to greatest extent possible, in-depth local knowledge of those who actually experienced Katrina and its aftermath. The gathering of personal knowledge through interview process allows Chamlee-Wright to illuminate impact of culture on broader recovery process. This essay reviews four of central themes in The Cultural and Political Economy of Recovery: (1) cultural toolkit, (2) use of qualitative methods in social science research, (3) polycentricism and disaster recovery, and (4) entrepreneurship in non-priced environments. Our purpose is twofold. First, to make clear Chamlee-Wright's contributions to our understanding of disaster recovery. Second, to demonstrate how these themes provide an opportunity for interdisciplinary/exchange by blending insights from across social sciences. In what follows we dedicate a section to reach of four themes. In each case we provide a brief overview of Chamlee-Wright's core arguments, as well as areas for future research and exploration. The Cultural Toolkit At outset, Chamlee-Wright describes her project as an exercise in cultural economy, a research program that seeks to understand why and how market processes work within specific cultural contexts (Chamlee-Wright 2010: 16). The key intellectual progenitors of this research program are a diverse and multi-disciplinary group including: classical economist Adam Smith, political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville, new institutional economist Douglass North, and cultural sociologist Ann Swidler. The intellectual core shared by all of these scholars, including Chamlee-Wright, is notion that context within which a society operates will influence functioning of market and other social processes. For Chamlee-Wright, socio-economic outcomes are result of complex interactions between culture and institutional rules of community in question. She proposes that these interacting processes can be divided into four categories, each of which affects and is affected by every other: generalized norms, social networks, shared mental models, and cultural tools. In combination these processes form the structure of socially embedded resources (Chamlee-Wright 2010: 16). Generalized norms and social networks are highly similar phenomena, with both seen as generally arising from repeated mutually beneficial social interaction. Their compatibility is illustrated with example that a social network of individuals who grow to trust each other can lead to a general social norm of trust in exchange. Mental models and cultural tools are also similar in nature. …

Getting and Staying Out of a Low Trust Trap: The Relative Roles of Tipping and Institutional Reform

Given that there are significant endogenous effects in trust that cause people to follow trust norms when deciding whether to trust others, trust can be modelled as a supermodular game or a game with strategic complementarities. As such, even though the strategy choices are binary and discrete, the game is amenable to monotone comparative static analysis in which institutional reform can be represented as an increase in a parameter in the game of trust. The analysis pessimistically implies that formal institutional reform has only a limited role to play in increasing the level of trust because low trust is in fact an equilibrium or a „low trust trap.‟ What is first required is a tipping mechanism, which involves only a relatively small number of influential agents adopting the strategy of trusting others even in a low trust environment. Formal institutions, appropriately reformed, will then be required to ensure that shocks to trust, even if they did occur, would not accumulate and tip society back into low trust.

Social norms, information, and trust among strangers: theory and evidence

Can a social norm of trust and reciprocity emerge among strangers? We investigate this question by examining behavior in an experiment where subjects repeatedly play a two-player binary “trust” game. Players are randomly and anonymously paired with one another in each period. The main questions addressed are whether a social norm of trust and reciprocity emerges under the most extreme information restriction (anonymous community-wide enforcement) or whether trust and reciprocity require additional, individual-specific information about a player’s past history of play and whether that information must be provided freely or at some cost. In the absence of such reputational information, we find that a social norm of trust and reciprocity is difficult to sustain. The provision of reputational information on past individual decisions significantly increases trust and reciprocity, with longer histories yielding the best outcomes. Importantly, we find that making reputational information available at a small cost may also lead to a significant improvement in trust and reciprocity, despite the fact that most subjects do not choose to purchase this information.

Trustworthiness is a social norm, but trusting is not

Previous literature has demonstrated the important role that trust plays in developing and maintaining well-functioning societies. However, if we are to learn how to increase levels of trust in society, we must first understand why people choose to trust others. One potential answer to this is that people view trust as normative: there is a social norm for trusting that imposes punishment for noncompliance. To test this, we report data from a survey with salient rewards to elicit people’s attitudes regarding the punishment of distrusting behavior in a trust game. Our results show that people do not behave as though trust is a norm. Our participants expected that most people would not punish untrusting investors, regardless of whether the potential trustee was a stranger or a friend. In contrast, our participants behaved as though being trustworthy is a norm. Most participants believed that most people would punish someone who failed to reciprocate a stranger’s or a friend’s trust. We conclude that, while we were able to reproduce previous results establishing that there is a norm of reciprocity, we found no evidence for a corresponding norm of trust, even among friends.

Modeling Cognitive Social Capital and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as Preconditions for Sustainable Networks of Relations

The paper studies the relationship between social capital (SC) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by investigating the idea of a virtuous circle between the level of SC and the implementation of CSR practices that favours the creation of cooperative networks between the firm and all its stakeholders by promoting the spread of social norms of trust, trustworthiness and cooperation. Following the literature on SC that stresses its multidimensional character (e.g. Paldam 2000), we consider two dimensions of this notion. Starting from the distinction introduced by Uphoff (1999), we take into account a cognitive and a structural idea of SC. The first one essentially refers to the dispositional characters of agents that affect their propensity to behave in different ways. The latter refers to social networks connecting agents.With regard to the concept of CSR, we adopt a contractarian approach and consider CSR as an extended model of corporate governance, based on the fiduciary duties owed to all the firm's stakeholders. Among stakeholders, we distinguish between strong and weak stakeholders. Both these two categories have made specific investments in the firm. However, strong stakeholders are precious for the firm because they bring in strategic assets. They are, for example, skilled workers or institutional investors. On the contrary, weak stakeholders do not bring strategic assets into the firm and firms have material incentives at defecting in the relationship with them. They are, for example, unskilled workers. By using the tools of psychological game theory, the paper shows the role of cognitive social capital and the adoption of CSR practices in promoting the emergence of social norms of trust, trustworthiness and cooperation which favour the creation of cooperative networks between the firm and all its stakeholders (structural social capital). In particular, we show that: a) the level of cognitive SC plays a key role in inducing the firm to adopt and observe CSR practices that respect all the stakeholders; b) the decision of adopting formal instruments of CSR contributes to create cognitive SC that is endogenously determined in the model; c) the level of cognitive SC and the decision of adopting CSR practices creates structural SC in terms of a long term relationship between the firm and the weak and strong stakeholders.

Advancing Creativity and Citizen Engagement by Collaborative Leadership

This paper argues that the structure and process of collaboration enhances prospects for creativity and citizen engagement. These rewards of collaboration also accompany inefficiency problems with the risks of increasing transaction costs, opportunity costs, and social capital costs. In competing with traditional (ex. hierarchical) modes of problem solving, nevertheless, collaboration as a problem solving strategy can have merits when the right leadership puts its rewards surpassing its risks. When leaders seek to facilitate ‘collaborative processes,’ they need to pay attentions to five dimensions of governance, administration, mutuality, autonomy, and norms of trust and reciprocity. From Chrislip and Larson’s work, I adopt ‘process leadership’ as a suitable leadership type for collaboration due to the fact that problem solving situations are characterized by cross-boundary collaboration, unclear prospects for getting results, and supremacy of nurturing over expertise. Rather than tactical, positional, or heroic leadership, this process leadership shares a great deal in common with transformational, servant or facilitative leadership. Collaborative leadership skills such as managing paradox, leading in solving peer problems, and keeping partners in networks are good examples.

Risk, Cooperation and the Economic Origins of Social Trust: An Empirical Investigation

Extensive research has documented the importance of social trust for economic development, yet the origins of trust remain largely unexplored. This paper examines the historical relationship between risk, cooperation and the emergence of social trust. I hypothesize that norms of trust developed in preindustrial times as a result of experiences of collective action and mutual insurance triggered by the need for subsistence farmers to cope with climatic risk. These norms persisted over time, even after climate had become largely unimportant for economic activity. I test this hypothesis in the context of Europe combining high-resolution climate data for the period 1500-2000 with contemporary survey data at the sub-national level. I find that regions characterized by higher year-to-year variability in precipitation and temperature display higher levels of trust. Consistent with a theory of insurance through geographic differentiation, I also find that trust is higher in regions with more spatially heterogeneous precipitation. Furthermore, variation in social trust is driven by weather patterns during the growing season and by historical rather than recent variability. These results are robust to the inclusion of country fixed-effects, a variety of geographical controls, and regional measures of early political and economic development.

Trust, Race, and Welfare Reform in the American States

Scholars are rediscovering the social context of politics and governing, including race, trust, and, if recent elections are a guide, America’s “culture wars.” Social capital that network of social relations and the accompanying norms of trust and reciprocity is very much to the point of those dynamics. Evidence from the first round of welfare reform in the late 1990s is used to explore the relationship between elements of social capital, race and state welfare policy choices. The evidence from the welfare case suggests that one element of social capital, generalized trust, often has an independent effect on welfare policies. States with higher levels of trust are more likely to adopt welfare policies that rely on “carrots” rather than “sticks” to move individuals off welfare and into jobs. At the same time the evidence makes it clear that the influence of trust is very much conditioned by racial considerations, most notably the racial composition of welfare caseloads.

Collective Efficacy in the School Context: Does It Help Explain Victimization and Bullying Among Greek Primary and Secondary School Students?

Collective efficacy, defined as informal social controls that operate under social norms of trust, is an emerging theoretical concept that has been applied to explain violence rates in neighborhoods, affiliation with deviant peers, partner violence, and adolescent delinquency. This study employed a multilevel design to examine the association between collective efficacy at the class-level and individual-level bullying perpetration and victimization using survey data from 1,729 Greek students, aged 11 to 14 years. School class collective efficacy was defined as cohesion and trust among class members combined with their willingness to intervene in the case of aggressive or bullying incidents. Our findings indicate that individual-level victimization is more frequent in classes with lower levels of collective efficacy. We conclude that the notion of collective efficacy might also prove useful in explaining bullying involvement.

How communication increases interpersonal cooperation in mixed-motive situations

Evidence from two experiments indicates that task-related communication promotes cooperation in mixed-motive situations by activating interpersonal norms related to fairness and trust. In Experiment 1, task-related communication increased cooperation between individuals in a three-choice prisoner’s dilemma game (PDG-Alt) but task-unrelated communication did not. In Experiment 2, cooperation was increased both by sending a task-related message to one’s counterpart and receiving a cooperative task-related message from one’s counterpart. Mediation analyses revealed that task-related communication increased cooperation by activating fairness and trust norms (Experiments 1 and 2). Specifically, whereas sending (relative to receiving) a task-related message increased cooperation by activating fairness norms, receiving (relative to sending) a task-related message increased cooperation by activating trust norms (Experiment 2).

Social Norms, Information and Trust Among Strangers: Theory and Evidence

How do norms of trust and reciprocity arise? We investigate this question by examining behavior in an experiment where subjects play a series of indefinitely repeated trust games. Players are randomly and anonymously matched each period. The parameters of the game are chosen so as to support trust and reciprocity as a sequential equilibrium when no reputational information is available. The main questions addressed are whether a social norm of trust and reciprocity emerges under the most extreme information restriction (community-wide enforcement) or whether trust and reciprocity require additional, individual-specific information about a player’s past history of play and how long that history must be. In the absence of such reputational information, we find that a social norm of trust and reciprocity is difficult to sustain. The provision of reputational information on past individual decisions significantly increases trust and reciprocity, with longer histories yielding the best outcomes. Importantly, we find that making reputational information available at a small cost may also lead to a significant improvement in trust and reciprocity, despite the fact that most subjects do not choose to purchase this information.