What Model of Trust for Networked Cooperation? Online Social Trust in the Production of Common Goods (Knowledge Sharing)

Social cooperation requires trust both in the offline and online sphere of information, since we all rely on the information of others when taking a decision or behaving under the conditions of uncertainty resulting from the complexity of environment. This raises a philosophical question concerning interpersonal communication. Must the communication be based on a previously established norm, such as technological or organizational procedures, in order to promote cooperation? Or is such a norm likely to grow out of the communication process? We believe that party trust, built as a result of relations between agents, constitutes a normative, ordered and social relationship that reaches beyond technology, since it is not affected by obsolescence nor does it require full information, and thus high transaction cost, in order to be established.