, A . , PIENKOWSKI , D . , LI , F . An Institutional Approach to Trust in Electronic Transactions [ by ]

Open, distributed and multi-party systems provide an infrastructure on which electronic transactions between organizations can be performed, pervading social and political boundaries to facilitate the realization of novel organizational paradigms. Electronic transactions are, though, prone to uncertainty amongst organizations and which can lead to a perception of vulnerability to exploitative behavior. In the presence of such behavior, the economic viability of electronic transactions is endangered. Organizations may perceive a vulnerability to such opportunistic behavior, and therefore decide not to participate. In order to retain the economic viability of these transactions, organizations must perceive an alignment of interests with those of the other organization in the transaction. Institutions can define behavioral constraints over the organizations in the transaction to manipulate the interests of an organization to attain alignment, such that the behavior of each organization is cooperative, and in the mutual interest. In this paper, we investigate the utilization of institutions in electronic transactions to attain cooperation and trust in cooperation, and the realization of these institutions as distributed protocols. © 2009 University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Printed and published by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Computing Science, Claremont Tower, Claremont Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England. Bibliographical details SMITH, C., VAN MOORSEL, A., PIENKOWSKI, D., LI, F. An Institutional Approach to Trust in Electronic Transactions [by] C Smith, A Van Moorsel, D Pienkowski, F Li Newcastle upon Tyne: University of Newcastle upon Tyne: Computing Science, 2009. (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Computing Science, Technical Report Series, No. CS-TR-1161)