Modelling trust relationships in Collaborative Networked Organisations

40 Int. J. Technology Transfer and Commercialisation, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Modelling trust relationships in Collaborative Networked Organisations

Simon Samwel Msanjila* and Hamideh Afsarmanesh Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, Kruislaan 419, Matrix I, 1098 VA Amsterdam, The Netherlands E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author

Abstract: This paper paves the way for understanding the base notion of trust relationships among organisations, which is central to the successful operation of Collaborative Networked Organisations (CNOs). The suggested approach for establishment of trust relationships is particularly important for large and very large CNOs where their member organisations are not totally known by each other; nevertheless need to trust each other to collaborate. This paper contributes to understanding and modelling of trust relationships in CNOs. It analyses elements necessary for modelling trust relationships and presents three possible formalisms: record-based, object-based, and ontology-based for modelling trust relationships in CNOs.

Keywords: trust relationships; trust level; trust among organisations; virtual organisation breeding environment.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Msanjila, S.S. and Afsarmanesh, H. (2007) ‘Modelling trust relationships in Collaborative Networked Organisations’, Int. J. Technology Transfer and Commercialisation, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp.40–55.

Biographical notes: Simon Samwel Msanjila has graduated BSc in Computer Science in 2001 from the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and MSc in Systems Engineering in 2004 from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. Since September 2004, he has started his PhD research at the Computer Science Department of the University of Amsterdam specialising on trust management for collaborative networked organisations. He has published papers in areas of management of trust among organisations in collaborative networked organisations, web-services, and modelling and simulation of web-service based business processes.

Hamideh Afsarmanesh is an Associate Professor at the Computer Science Department of the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. At this Faculty, she is also the Director of the COLNET (Collaborative Networks) group. She has received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1985. She has directed research in more than 15 National, European, and International projects. She has published more than 150 papers in journals, books, and refereed conference proceedings in computer science research. She has co-edited more than ten books and various issues of international journals.

Modelling trust relationships in Collaborative Networked Organisations 41

1 Introduction

Organisations and especially SMEs are nowadays faced with many challenges for their successful operation in the current market and society. Even their survivability in the current market characterised by turbulent conditions, is at risk and becomes uncertain. Among others, the increasing competitions, and current governments’ tendency towards liberalisation and globalisation, the growing scarcity of resources, the increasing level of changes in customers’ demands, and the volatility of opportunities, are some of the key factors that catalyse this uncertainty (Jones et al., 2000). Therefore, organisations, and especially SMEs can less and less afford acquiring and executing business opportunities individually.

In order to enhance their survivability in the market, organisations are now interested in pulling others closer to cooperate and/or collaborate. They pull them closer to share their resources, knowledge, skills, etc., that are scarce in markets as well as their gained profits, in order to also be able to share their risks and potential losses. They have realised that if they act together they enhance their competitive power and thus can acquire more and better opportunities. Therefore, nowadays pushing others out of the market is no longer considered a sustainable working approach for organisations (Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh, 2006) and supporting cooperative and collaborative networks in CNOs become more and more important.

Current research on CNOs addresses the necessity for the pre-existence of Virtual organisations Breeding Environments (VBEs) in order to support the fluid creation of dynamic opportunity-based Virtual Organisations (VOs) (Afsarmanesh and Camarinha-Matos, 2005) as addressed below. While collaboration among organisations provides the promise of better success, a big remaining challenge and risk is how to choose trustworthy partners to pull closer and include in VOs to address a market/society opportunity. And an open area for research is how to assist organisations in selecting trustworthy partners and how collaborative/cooperative working environments, such as VBEs, should be characterised to enhance their trustworthiness?

A VBE is one of the forms of the new emerging paradigm of CNO (Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh, 2004). VBEs focus on preparing their member organisations for potential co-working and enhancing their survivability in the current turbulent market. One such preparedness feature is transforming the traditional point-to-point connection among organisations into a networked-structure. A VBE is defined as an association of organisations and related supporting institutions adhering to a base long-term cooperation agreement, and adopting common operating principles and infrastructures, with the main goal of increasing both their chances and preparedness towards collaboration in potential VOs (Afsarmanesh and Camarinha-Matos, 2005). Establishing trust relationships among VBE members and the ability to assess the trustworthiness of others in the VBE are the base requirement for the effective operation of VBEs and creation of successful VOs.

42 S.S. Msanjila and H. Afsarmanesh

1.1 Important definitions

This paper will use the following definitions:

• An actor is an organisation participating in a trust relationship. There are two kinds of actors. The first is the trustor, which is an organisation that assesses the trust level of another organisation. The second is the trustee, which is an organisation that wants its trust level to be assessed (Msanjila and Afsarmanesh, 2006).

• Trust objective. It is the purpose for which the trust establishment among involved organisations is required. Examples of trust objectives include: for inviting an organisation to join a VO, for appointing and/or selecting an organisation as the VO coordinator, etc. (Rtanasingam, 2005).

• Trust perspective. It represents the ‘point of view’ of the trustor on the most important aspects that must be considered for assessing the trust level of the trustee.

• Trust requirement. It represents the essentials (cardinals) that characterise and guide on how the respective trust perspective can be realised. Thus, trust requirements are the fundamental cardinals that guide or suggest what must be met in order for the respective trust perspective to be realised. For instance, ‘financial stability’ is an example requirement that must be met to support the economical perspective, similarly ‘compliance with community standards’ is a requirement for the social perspective, and ‘stability in management’ is a requirement for managerial perspective.

• Trust criteria. Refer to the measurable elements that can establish a judgement about a given trust requirement. Every trust criteria have two attributes for its values, namely: Trust value metrics, which refer to the scales that identify the meaning of the measured values for the criterion, and Trust value constraints, which refer to the limits that separate the acceptable from unacceptable range of values.

• Trust level. Refer to the level (intensity) of trust for a trustee in a trust relationship, based on the assessment of the necessary trust criteria (Msanjila and Afsarmanesh, 2006). Clearly enough, the criteria for trust assessment of organisations are varied and wide in spectrum. The level that the constraints for a given set of trust criteria are met determines the level of trust. When trust level is assessed for a certain purpose, such as for inviting a member to a VO, and the assessment based on specific trust criteria, we call the results specific trustworthiness.

• Trust relationship. A relationship is a state of connectedness among people or organisations or is a state involving mutual dealing among people or parties. The trust relationship refers to the state of connectedness between the trustor and trustee whose intensity is characterised by trust level (Msanjila and Afsarmanesh, 2006).

• A Virtual Organisation (VO) is an association of (legally) independent organisations that comes together to share resources and skills to achieve a common goal such as acquiring and executing a collaboration opportunity (Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh, 2006). VOs are configured constituting suitable VBE members that are selected based on requirements of the opportunity, such as competence, trust level, etc.


1.2 Problem area description and research questions

Trust is defined differently in different disciplines and research. Among others, the following three definitions are dominant:

“Trust is the willingness of a trustor to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectations that the trustee will perform a particular action important to the trustor irrespective of the ability to monitor or control the trustee.” (Lane and Bachmann, 1998)

“Trust is the belief in the competency of an entity to act dependably, securely and reliably within a specified context (assuming dependability covers reliability and timeliness).” (Grandison and Sloman, 2000)

“Trust is a psychological condition comprising the trustor’s intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectation of trustee’s intentions and behaviour.” (Rousseau et al., 1998)

The diversity among these definitions makes it difficult to properly characterise trust. There are also many theories on trust, some of which diverge from each other only in their identification of the grounds on which they are based. Despite the difficulties in solidifying the definitions of trust, in practice trust is a base for cooperation and collaboration among individuals as well as among organisations. Research on CNOs already report that the effectiveness and efficiency of VBE establishment as well as the VO creation depends on the right balance of trust and trust relationships among organisations (Mezger, 2006).

While the importance of trust and trust relationships is palpable for collaboration and cooperation of organisations, further to the question raised in the introduction, the following questions must be properly addressed:

a Can trustworthiness (trust level) of an organisation be measured? How complex is trustworthiness? Does it have a quantitative value(s), and if so, what are the metrics? Furthermore, is it one number or a set of numbers? If not quantitative, then is it a qualitative value, such as good or bad, high or low?

In Msanjila and Afsarmanesh (2006), we presented an approach for trustworthiness of organisations to be measured in terms of qualitative values for a set of trust criteria. We argued that trustworthiness is complex and can neither be measured with single values nor interpreted with single metrics. The level upon which several specific constraints are met can represent the trust level of an organisation.

Understanding and properly interpreting trust levels described in terms of values for a set of trust criteria will be complex and difficult to most decision makers, such as managers, directors, etc., who are not trust experts. Therefore, trust level must be presented in a format, which is as understandable as possible. However, a help of trust experts, in specific environment or domain, to interpret the trust levels will always be helpful to decision makers.

In order to assess and manage trust in VBEs, trust and trust relationships must be properly characterised, and modelled. This paper addresses the modelling of trust relationships in VBEs.


b Does every organisation have the same trust objectives and trust perspectives for establishing trust relationships with others?

c What trust criteria and how many must be applied to measure the trust level of an organisation?

To further clarify questions (b) and (c) consider the example of a municipality authority, which wants to form a VO to address a certain community problem. The authority may consider some or all varieties of issues to assess the trust levels for potential organisations (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 Example of information diversity for assessing trust levels of organisations

Another organisation (for instance, a department at the ministry) can prefer different kind of information to assess trust levels of potential organisations for the same purpose. It is difficult to know in advance which trust perspective will be preferred by an organisation to assess trust. Also, it is difficult to specify in advance trust criteria needed for assessing trust levels of organisations for collaboration.

The support for understanding of trust and trust relationships has not been adequately addressed, despite its key role in CNOs and specifically, in VBEs. In this paper we address modelling of trust relationships in VBEs as a step towards answering questions (b) and (c). We identify trust elements that must be included in a trust relationship model for VBEs. We define trust elements as all abstract and non-abstract (measurable) variables that together characterise trust and/or trust relationships, and further, they are the base for measurements and assessment of trust level for organisations. Furthermore, we study and analyse relations among these trust elements. These trust elements can guide on making decisions about the relevant information for assessing trust levels. Additionally, the elements can also guide to decide about the information that must be provided to actors during the establishment of trust relationships. A trust relationship model can defines these aspects and eases the understanding of trust.

1.3 Trust-needs in VBEs

Successes of cooperation and collaboration in VBEs rely on trust among its members some of which may be physically unknown to each other, i.e., in large VBEs. Establishing trust relationships acts as a catalyser for enhancement of both cooperation and collaboration among members, as well as for the management of these VBEs. In fact, stability and functionality of these VBEs require the right balance of trust among their members. That is why past research refers to trust as one most salient factor for collaborations in VBEs and for achieving business objectives (Morgan and Hunt, 1994).


Trust relationships are very important for industry-based VBEs. In such environments, trust among members is very important to facilitate cooperation/ collaboration since these VBEs function under the pressure from global economy, the growing value of information, and the increasing uncertainties and risks that surround most businesses (Abdul-Rahman and Hailes, 2000). For the specific case of VBEs trust is essential (here referred as Trust-Needs) for three counts that were also briefly introduced in Msanjila and Afsarmanesh (2006):

• Trust among members. The main aim of establishing trust relationships among VBE members is to enhance the efficiency and success of both their cooperation within the VBE as well as their potential collaboration in VOs that will be configured within the VBE. The trust perspectives for this Trust-Need are shown in Figure 2 and further addressed in Section 3.

• Trust between the member and the VBE administration. Trust of VBE members to the VBE administration enhances the chance of members remaining loyal to the VBE, increases their willingness for active involvement in VBE, and encourages VBE members to invite and bring other valuable organisations into VBE. Figure 3 shows the trust perspectives for this Trust-Need which are further addressed in Section 4.3.

• Trust between the customer and the VBE: VBEs must be trusted by their customers. Customers that create opportunities in the market (to which VBE can respond by creating VOs) must recognise and trust the VBE to accept its proposed bid. Consumers (end users) must trust the VBE in order to decide positively on purchasing VBE’s products and services. Figure 4 shows the trust perspectives for this Trust-Need which are further addressed in Section 4.3.

Figure 2 Trust perspective pentagon

Figure 3 Trust perspective square

Figure 4 Trust perspective triangle


2 Related research

Research on trust is characterised by a substantial diversity in its disciplinary background, methodologies, models, and definitions (Bigley and Pierce, 1998). Three dominant definitions of trust were presented in Section 1. Other frequently used definitions are in McAllister (1995), Dasgupta (1998) and Barber (1983). At the individual level, it is suggested that trust is a psychological state with the intention of accepting vulnerability for a positive expectation from interactions (Rousseau et al., 1998). Similarly, there is diversity among existing trust models. Researchers model trust depending on how they define and perceive it. While the following environments are all different from VBEs, each researched one addresses some aspects that are related to VBEs:

• An integrated model of trust for e-commerce applications. To study trust in e-commerce, Kini and Choobineh (1998) developed a trust model that provides a strong theoretical foundation for evaluating factors that influence trust in e-commerce. The model consists of four dimensions (Figure 5) and is based on the assumption that trust in an online system is a function of characteristics of the person making the transaction, the online system, the task which the system execute, and the information environment.

• FIRE: Trust model for open communities. FIRE is an integrated trust and reputation model proposed for open communities (Huynh et al., 2004). It provides representation of uncertainties explicitly. However, it is only used to add some weight to different nodes (actors) during the complete trust integration phase. It also applies a very simple approach for aggregating information. The modellers enhance the performance of their model by separating different trust elements, but they do not reach the level of intelligent trust model. Therefore, if there is variation in reliability of trustor the function for the trust (due to the system of priorities) may fail to account variations.

• Direct: A trust model for VO creation process. The model is based on reputation and it is applied for VO creation process (Avila-Rosas and Luck, 2005). Based on reputation of each other the invited members decide to accept or reject the invitation. The model also eases the process of assessing and selecting the most suitable set of VBE members for the VO. The reputation is computed from own experiences and from mediated experiences.

• FiXS. This trust model defines the underlying foundation to guide common operating rules and legal procedures for the Federation of Identity and Cross- Credentialing Systems. It facilitates all participants and advisors to maintain their existing security systems and policies intact while strengthening their credentialing processes to achieve a balanced trust level in a shared infrastructure. The model is based on the concept of community trust and brokered trust (Figure 6).

The above trust models do not adequately address trust as being characterised in VBEs. These existing models are focused either at the level of individuals or on specific application. Trust in VBEs is characterised as multi-disciplinary, multi-perspective, multi-actor subject. Thus, trust models for VBEs must include all these aspects, as presented in Sections 3 and 4.


Figure 5 An integrated model of trust for e-commerce application

Source: Kini and Choobineh (1998)

Figure 6 Trust model for federation of identity and cross-credential systems

Source: www.fix.org

3 Elements for modelling of trust relationships

This section paves important elements that must be included in models of trust relationships among members in VBEs. These are actors, trust perspectives, and time.

3.1 Actors: trustor and trustee

The two parties of the trust relationship (as defined in Section 1) are very important for defining, modelling and establishing trust relationships. Generally, a variety of factors might be required by different trustors for assessing trust level of the same trustee, even with the same ‘trust objective’. Therefore, it is important that both trustor and trustee are represented in the trust relationship model distinctively.

3.2 Trust perspectives for trust relationships among organisations

Trust perspectives preferred by the trustor guide the process of collecting and deciding on the kind of information that a trustor or trust expert can use to assess the trust level of a trustee. Each of Trust-Need stated in Section 1 is characterised with different trust perspectives. For trust relationship among member organisations, the following trust perspectives were identified:


• Organisational Perspective (OP). For some purposes, some trustors consider organisational setting and strength as primary aspects when assessing trust level of trustees. In this case the internal settings of an organisation play an important contribution to trust level of the trustee. Such kind of trustors may consider using factors such as size, coverage, competences, etc., of trustees to assess their trust level.

• Social Perspective (SP). For some purposes, some trustors consider social factors as primary when assessing trust level of trustee. They put more weight on issues like institutional and social concerns. Here, the primary aim, and the basis of existence of trustees and their daily activities are important. Trustees will be evaluated depending on achievements in issues such as their participation in communities’ services, contribution to societal achievements (e.g., disabled schools), compliance to community standards (e.g., environment standards), etc.

• Financial/economical Perspective (FP). For some purposes, some trustors consider financial factors as the primary aspect when assessing trust level of trustees. Thus, their trust level assessment is perceived as the organisation’s successes and capabilities on financial or economic issues. Trust based on the financial focuses on marketing, economic management and especially on the transaction specific investments and the firm’s performance (Rtanasingam, 2005). Trustors must know and have access to the financial information of trustees including capital, financial stability, economical strategic plans, gains and losses from participation in VOs, etc.

• Technological Perspective (TP). Technological trust is defined as the subjective probability by which organisations believe that the underlying technology infrastructure is capable of facilitating transactions according to their confident expectations (Rtanasingam, 2005). In this point of view, for high trust level, a trustee must possess a good and required infrastructure to facilitate the cooperation or collaboration. For example, a customer (as a trustor) can use various performance measures such as network speed, interoperability, and availability to evaluate electronic transaction (Mukherjee, 2003). More factors include supported technological standards, available platforms, experience in applying the technology in collaborations, reliability, security, etc.

• Behavioural/managerial Perspective (BP). For some purposes, some trustors consider the behaviour or the role of a trustee as primary aspects when assessing its trust level. In this manner, the trust assessment is based on how well the trustee professionally behaved and how well it uses its power when it gets into the management position. The behaviour perspective is rooted in trust relationship, which focuses on characteristics of inter-relationship behaviour of trading partners within a specific situation (Rtanasingam, 2005). The trust level of the trustee will be assessed based on issues such as the stability of the organisational management (e.g., management structure, frequency of power change, etc.), VO collaborative behaviour (e.g., opportunistic behaviour, commitment, goodwill, predictability, etc.) (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). The behaviour of the management presents the behaviour of the organisation internally and externally.


Trust perspectives are abstract ‘point of view’ and thus cannot be measured. To facilitate measurement, through different levels, they are hierarchically characterised to measurable entities here referred to as trust criteria. At first, each trust perspective is characterised with a set of trust requirements. Trust requirements are used to define conditions and pre-conditions that a trustee must meet in order to be trusted by a trustor based on the specified trust perspective (Msanjila and Afsarmanesh, 2006).

Each trust requirement is characterised by a set of trust criteria. A trust criterion is a measurable element that can establish a judgement about a given trust requirement. Each trust criterion constitutes of two attributes: trust criterion value metric and trust criterion value constraint. A list of base trust criteria for VBEs is presented in Msanjila and Afsarmanesh (2006). Figure 7 shows tree-relations among perspectives, requirements and criteria.

Figure 7 Perspective, requirements and criteria relation’s tree

3.3 Time

Trust relationship (and its intensity) between two organisations is a timely issue, which may differ considering yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In other words, trust level of trustees is not static and may vary depending on changes in the factors as well as the specific assessment approaches. Thus time is an important factor, and must be addressed in modelling trust relationships in VBEs.

4 Formalised specification of trust relationships

In order to precisely model trust relationships, and their related components, we have chosen to define models based on record, object, and ontology formalisms.

4.1 Record-based formalism of a trust relationship

We model trust relationships as record (e.g., relational data model) of their components. Equation (1) shows general representation of a single trust relationship between the trustor and the trustee. In this model and others presented here, TR refers to trust relationship, TRO refers to trustor, TRE refers to trustee, TL refers to trust level and constr refers to constraints. The status indicates whether the TR is past, present or future.


[ , , , start _ date, status],[Perspective, (requirements, ( ))] and

Criteria [value _ constr, value _ metric].

TR TRO TRE TLTL criteria

==

= (1)

When the respective trustor has multiple trust relationships to the same trustee the attributes: TL, start-date and status of TR record are repeating attributes. The repeating attributes are closed by parentheses. The repeating attributes representation takes into account the fact that although the actors are the same, but it is possible for each trust relationship between the trustor and the trustee to have different trust level. While the TL and criteria records remain the same, the TR record changes as in equation (2).

[ , , ( , start _ date, status)].TR TRO TRE TL= (2)

Furthermore, it is possible for a trustor to have many trust relationships to different trustees (equation (3)). A single trustee can also have many trust relationships to different trustors (equation (4)). Moreover, these TR can have different trust level.

[ ,( , , start _ date, status)]TR TRO TRE TL= (3)

[ ,( ,( , start _date, status))].TR TRO TRE TL= (4)

When a trustee has multiple trust relationships to different trustors, the inverse of the records in equations (3) and (4) become the required equations (5) and (6).

[ ,( , , start _ date, status)]TR TRE TRO TL= (5)

[ , ( ,( , start _ date, status))].TR TRE TRO TL= (6)

The formalised representation of trust relationships among actors when a trustor is also a trustee at the same time and probably to different trustees and trustors is difficult. For this case, we have addressed it using an example of record based trust relationship model represented in diagrammatic form. In this example we focus on the relationships and we refer the model as relationship-based model, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8 Relationship based model for multiple participation among organisations

4.2 Object-based formalism for trust relationships

In object-based formalism, elements are modelled as objects and their cardinalities are indicated to show the relations among the objects for trust elements and also to represent relevant details necessary to define the trust relationship model. Figure 9 shows an objective-based trust relationship model.


Figure 9 Object based model for trust relationship among member organisations

4.3 Ontology-based formalism for trust in VBEs

Three kinds of Trust-Needs in VBEs are described in Section 1. For each Trust-Need, an organisation may prefer different kind of information to assess trust level of another organisation. In other word, organisations prefer different trust perspectives to assess trust levels in each Trust-Need. This is because the Trust-Needs have different focuses as described in Section 1. Trust perspectives for trust among member organisations are detailed in Section 3.

In Msanjila and Afsarmanesh (2006) and in Figure 3 trust perspectives for trust between a member and the VBE administration are defined. Below they are further described.

• VBE policy related perspective. Policy is a plan of action to guide decisions and actions. Policies in short can be understood as political, management, financial, and administrative mechanisms to support reaching explicit goals. In VBE aspects and related to trust, policies that must be accessible to members including the following:

• cooperation rules

• governance principles

• bylaw.

• Transparency and fairness related perspective. The VBE administration must be transparent and fair to all VBE members. For this purpose the following information must therefore be accessible by all VBE members:

• trust level measures

• performance measures

• partner selection processes

• incentives and reward.


• VBE component related perspective. Refers to components that constitute the VBE. The main component of a VBE is its members. VOs in some cases, when existing, become components of the respective VBE. Another component is the supporting institutions. A member that wants to assess trust level of a VBE and its administration might possibly prefer information related to VBE structure and its components. We suggest that a member can be provided with information about:

• VO restricted profiles

• members restricted profiles

• supporting institution restricted profiles.

• VBE-self related perspective. When it comes to trusting a VBE as whole, VBE members must also be supported with information that will build a positive picture about the VBE. We suggest providing information about the following:

• member restricted performance history

• VBE self restricted profile

• VBE performance history

• VO performance history.

Furthermore, in Msanjila and Afsarmanesh (2006) and as shown in Figure 4 trust perspectives for trust between a customer and the VBE are also described. Below they are further explained.

• Profile related perspective. This information will enable the customer to understand the constituents of the VBE and its related competences. This includes:

• VBE public profile including list of members and list of VOs

• VO public profile including partners’ information and VO performances

• public profiles of VBE members

• recognitions or acknowledgements for previous product/service

• specific previous achievements.

• VBE advertisement related perspective. As in normal business world, VBEs will also advertise their products and services (offered through VOs) to the market. Information on advertisements that are usually made will indicate the capability of the VBE to reach customers. Such information includes the following:

• copy of advertisements in the media

• link of advertisements in various websites

• news letters.


• Service for client related perspective. A customer can be convinced to trust the VBE based on how it will be supported when acquiring the services. This includes:

• customer portal

• customer registration functions.

Based on the identified trust perspectives for all the three Trust-Needs, we modelled trust relationship based on ontology formalism (Figure 10). The model shows the ontological relations among these concepts of trust.

Figure 10 Ontology based trust relationship model

5 Conclusion

This paper has addressed the subject of trust and trust relationships in CNOs, and contributes to modelling of trust relationships. Modelling of trust relationships aims at characterisation of trust in CNOs. Three different models for trust relationships were presented based on records, objects and ontology formalisms. Elements of trust, and trust relationships were also identified.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported in part by the ECOLEAD project funded by the European commission. The authors thank the valuable contributions of their partners in the ECOLEAD consortium.

A version of this paper was published in Kierkegaard (2006).


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Website FiXS: Federation for Identity and Cross Credentialing Systems, www.fix.org.

Modelling trust relationships in Collaborative Networked Organisations

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