In order to succeed, it is imperative that all e-commerce systems include an effective and reliable trust and reputation modeling system. This is particularly true of decentralized e-commerce systems in which autonomous software engage in commercial transactions. Many researchers have sought to overcome the complexities of modeling a subjective, human concept like trust, resulting in several trust and reputation models. While these models each present a unique offering and solution to the problem, several issues persist. Most of the models require direct experience in the e-commerce system in order to make effective trust decisions. This leaves new agents and agents who only casually use the e-commerce system vulnerable. Additionally, the reputation ratings of agents who are relatively new to the system are often indistinguishable from scores for poorly performing agents. Finally, more tactics to defend against agents who exploit the characteristics of the open, distributed system for their own malicious needs are required. To address these issues, a new metric is devised and presented: seniority. Based on agent age and activity level within the e-commerce system, seniority provides a means of judging the credibility of other agents with little or no prior experience in the system. As the results of experimental analysis reveals, employing a reputation model that uses seniority provides considerable value to agents who are new agents, casual buyer agents and all other purchasing agents in the e-commerce system. This new metric therefore offers a significant contribution toward the development of enhanced and new trust and reputation models for deployment in real-world distributed e-commerce environments.

This study reviews the burgeoning literature on followership and tests propositions from a recently developed theoretical framework to explore the relationship between follower behaviours, leaders’ perceptions of follower trustworthiness (trusting beliefs), and leaders’ subsequent willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of their followers (trusting intentions). Leaders’ implicit followership theories (IFTs) were examined as a potential moderator of both relationships. Results revealed that passive followership influenced leaders’ trusting beliefs negatively, whereas collaborative followership had a positive influence on leaders’ trusting beliefs as well as leaders’ trusting intentions. The most extreme form of proactive followership, challenging followership, had nonsignificant relationships with leaders’ trusting beliefs and intentions. In addition, leaders’ IFTs did not interact with followership behaviour to produce any change in leaders’ trusting beliefs. However, IFTs were found to moderate the relationship between leaders’ trusting beliefs and trusting intentions. Implications for research and practice are discussed in light of the results.

In this thesis, we propose a novel trust management scheme for improving routing reliability in wireless ad hoc networks. It is grounded on two classic autoregression models, namely Autoregressive (AR) model and Autoregressive with exogenous inputs (ARX) model. According to this scheme, a node periodically measures the packet forwarding ratio of its every neighbor as the trust observation about that neighbor. These measurements constitute a time series of data. The node has such a time series for each neighbor. By applying an autoregression model to these time series, it predicts the neighbors future packet forwarding ratios as their trust estimates, which in turn facilitate it to make intelligent routing decisions. With an AR model being applied, the node only uses its own observations for prediction; with an ARX model, it will also take into account recommendations from other neighbors. We evaluate the performance of the scheme when an AR, ARX or Bayesian model is used. Simulation results indicate that the ARX model is the best choice in terms of accuracy.

Due to the attractive advantages of wireless communication technologies, wireless networking and mobile computing has developed expeditiously and gained ample prevalence. Thereby, many practical applications are being designed for the use of wireless ad hoc networks in both military and civilian scenarios. However, some security concerns have arisen from such networks, especially in that misbehaving nodes pose a major threat during the construction of a trusted network. Therefore, security is one of the key challenges in wireless ad hoc networks, requiring significant attention due to their own features and concerns. This thesis presents several computational models and security strategies for the design of secure, trustworthy networks, which are able to make rational decisions when encountering potential threats. In this thesis, we first propose a distributed network management model for secure group communication. Our approach simplifies the complexity of traditional group management and supports the inclusion of other security mechanisms for the purpose of secure communications. As a decentralized management method, trust can perform well in a dynamic and agile environment. Our proposed trust system defines the concept of trust, establishes the trust relationship between distributed nodes, involves the novel and effective computational model, and specifies a set of trust-based rules in this system for wireless nodes. We also propose a hybrid cryptosystem through the application of both symmetric and asymmetric key algorithms to provide reliable and secure protection of data confidentiality. With the design of selective encryption, uncertainty is incorporated into data encryption and the overhead spent on the data protection is significantly reduced. Thus, the communicating parties not only obtain reliable security protection, but also improve the efficiency of data communication. Through security analysis and simulation experiments, we have shown how decentralized management is useful in wireless and ad hoc scenarios, how trust provides feasible solutions for misbehavior detection, and how our proposed strategies offer security properties.

The purpose of this research is to study how organizations maintain their competitive advantage in today’s turbulent and highly competitive business environment, by striving to become a learning organization. The impact of factors such as leadership (both transformational and transactional leadership) and trust on an organization’s learning capability is empirically examined. This research adds to the existing body of literature in two ways. First, it argues that a transactional leadership style can influence learning, despite research spanning the last decade that has focused on transformational leadership theory as the dominant model of effective leadership. Therefore, the importance of both leadership styles, each having valuable differential effects is emphasized in this study. Second, the previously untested role of trust as mediating the relationship between leadership and organizational learning capability is examined. It is argued that without supervisor trust, the opportunities for a learning organization to reach its full potential and to subsequently develop learning capabilities is reduced. Findings from this study support the influence of both leadership styles on learning. Trust in one’s supervisor was also found to fully mediate the relationship between leadership and learning.

This dissertation examines reputation as a regulating force in online and offline relationships and transactions, arguing that reputation requires protection through the promulgation of new laws. Using John Locke’s “under-labourer” approach as its central method, this dissertation ultimately sets out a series of conclusions, which form a preliminary framework upon which appropriate reputation regulation might be built. Part I of this dissertation studies offers an interdisciplinary study of reputation. Chapter 1 examines the ways that reputation is created and maintained, the purposes for which it is used, and its role in risk management and trust. These understandings are then applied to reputation in process. Chapter 2 explores formal reputation systems and the ways in which user investments and desires become written into reputation such that multiple levels of “dominant” norms may be simultaneously operant. Chapter 3 shows this normative force also operating on social network sites, shaping identity performances. Finally, having established these intersections and the regulating power of norms upon reputation, the effect of such performances is examined in chapter 4, which identifies reputation’s gatekeeper role in offline and online spaces and the risks this can create when information is accessed or employed without an understanding of the norms which have shaped that information. Thus reputation is shown as a socially negotiated and co-created process which exerts an unseen hegemonic force, with dominant political, economic and ideological interests embedded in seemingly social norms. These norms are enforced via reputation, which takes on a gatekeeper role, regulating access to a variety of spaces, information, and economic opportunities. Part II begins with an examination of the current forms of legal and quasi-legal regulation of reputation that exist, ultimately finding that none of them is fully applicable to the complexity of reputation. Having established this complexity and shown that current approaches are inadequate, chapter 6 moves on to examine and then reject the neoliberal approach currently applied to these issues, finding its focus on individual responsibility to be inadequate and inappropriate, calling instead for a mode of regulation that understands reputation within its social context.

Physical activity-based positive youth development (PA-PYD) programs can serve to empower and alleviate barriers to development for at-risk youth. Youth leaders may play an important role in these programs to foster the development of their younger peers, while mutually benefiting from the program as they foster and apply skills such as leadership, communication, and self-direction. Currently, there is a gap in literature as very few studies have examined youth leadership within PA-PYD programming. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to explore the perspectives and experiences of youth leaders and their fellow program participants in relation to youth leadership within the context of a PA-PYD program for at-risk youth. Data were gathered from 16 youth leaders (Mage= 13.37, SD = 1.36) and 15 program participants (Mage= 10.53, SD = 1.12) across four different program locations, using semi-structured, one-on-one interviews. This thesis is composed of two articles. The first article used a deductive-inductive thematic analysis to better understand the experiences that youth leaders had in the program. Three themes were identified: (a) building youth leaders is a process, (b) mentorship is perceived as critical for one’s leadership development, (c) trust is important for enhancing youth leader engagement. The second article also used a deductive-inductive thematic analysis to examine how youth leaders perceive the influence they have on younger peers who participate in the physical activity-based youth development program, as well as how these program participants perceive the role and impact of the youth leaders. Five themes emerged from the analysis, which were: (a) learning and building skills, (b) receiving support, (c) enjoyment, (d) relatability, and (e) lack of maturity. This research contributes to current gaps in the literature on youth leadership within physical activity-based youth programming and provides practical recommendations to improve such programming.

This thesis analyzes impact of social trust on environmental regulations stringency. Negative effect is suggested. Thesis documents that, in a cross section of countries, there is no evidence of such an effect. On the other hand, there is evidence of positive impact of GDP per capita and level of education.

The main objective of this thesis is to propose the model of trust based on communication. The objective is to first characterize virtual teams, summarized the theoretical approaches to trust in virtual teams, define the specifics of the communication process in virtual teams and design own model of trust based on communication. The proposed model is achieved on the basis of own research specifically: analysis, synthesis and detailed summary. The summary includes limitations of particular papers and weaknesses of research, what is taken into the consideration for the proposed model. The proposed model is based on the active form of trust that is build on proactive approach of team leader in the first phase of virtual team's life cycle and later on communication strategies through dialogue technique leading to shared mental models. The proposed model describes the process of building trust in first two stages of the virtual team's life cycle together with the implications for the leader: How to build trust in virtual teams through the communication.

Dans un contexte d’« hyper » compétition, la capacité d’adaptation à un environnement économique sans cesse changeant, détermine l'avenir et la stratégie des entreprises. La nécessité d’innover, et de mobiliser le savoir est un défi pour l’existence des organisations. Les réseaux d'entreprises sous leurs différentes formes répondent à cette situation car, pour innover, il faut coopérer et maîtriser l’économie en réseau. Les managers, peu préparés à un Knowledge management qui mobiliserait les savoirs de leurs firmes, doivent être sensibilisés à une nouvelle forme de gestion qui ne relève pas des coûts directs. La connaissance collective d'une entreprise, son capital immatériel, ne s'évaluent effectivement à la fin d’un processus d’innovation. La construction d’une véritable intelligence collective se basant sur un partage de savoirs se heurte à une résistance de la part des collaborateurs. Ce refus trouve ses raisons dans un manque de confiance vis-à-vis des partenaires au sein et à l’extérieur des entreprises constituées en dans un réseau. Un changement de mode de communication, plus transparent et plus ouvert, est une possibilité d’utiliser exploiter le potentiel humain et le capital social et d’améliorer la performance socio-économique. La mise en place d’une plateforme de communication, pilotée et coordonnée par un Community manager, utilisant les nouveaux média, pourra servir d’outil de changement vers une collaboration. La seule mise en place d’une technologie, sans la concertation avec les utilisateurs et sans un projet commun basé sur la confiance mutuelle des acteurs, ne pourra cependant pas suffire et demande l’accompagnement d’un expert extérieur à l’organisation. / In a context of "hyper" competition, the capacity of adaptation to a constantly changing economic environment, determines the future of companies. The necessity of innovating and of mobilizing knowledge is a constant challenge for the continued existence of organizations. Various types of company networks are an answer to this situation because, in order to innovate, it is necessary to cooperate and to master the economy through networks. Managers, little prepared for a "Knowledge" management which would mobilize the firm's expertise, must be prepared towards a new shape of management which does not just take direct costs into consideration. The collective knowledge of a company, its immaterial capital, is in reality, only assessed in posteriori at the end of the innovation process. Furthermore, the construction of a real collective intelligence based on sharing expertise comes up against resistance on behalf of the collaborators. This resistance is mainly due to a lack of trust towards the partners inside and outside a network. A change in communication skills and becoming more transparent and more open, is a possible means of developing human potential and social capital, and of improving socio-economic performance. The implementation of a communication platform piloted and coordinated by a Community manager, based on new media, can serve as tool of change towards collaboration. A company introducing new technology without mutual trust evolving from dialogue and coordination with users will most certainly require the services of an outside expert to accompany the collaborative project.