A Direct Reputation Model for VO Formation

We show that reputation is a basic ingredient in the Virtual Organisation (VO) formation process. Agents can use their experiences gained in direct past interactions to model other’s reputation and deciding on either join a VO or determining who is the most suitable set of partners. Reputation values are computed using a reinforcement learning algorithm, so agents can learn and adapt their reputation models of their partners according to their recent behaviour. Our approach is especially powerful if the agent participates in a VO in which the members can change their behaviour to exploit their partners. The reputation model presented in this paper deals with the questions of deception and fraud that have been ignored in current models of VO formation

Delivering services by building and running virtual organisations

Non peer reviewedPostprin

A high-level semiotic trust agent scoring model for collaborative virtual organisations

In this paper, we describe how a semiotic ladder, together with a supportive trust agent, can be used to address “soft” trust issues in the context of collaborative Virtual Organisations (VO). The intention is to offer all parties better support for trust (as reputation) management including the reduction of risk and improved reliability of VO e-services. The semiotic ladder is intended to support the VO e-service lifecycle through the articulation of e-trust at various levels of system abstraction, including trust as measurable confidence. At the social level, reputation and reliability measures of e-trust are the relevant dimensions as regards choice of VO partner and are also relevant to the negotiation of service level agreements between the VO partners. By contrast, at the lower levels of the trust ladder, e-trust measures typically address the degree to which secure sign on and message level security conforms to various tangible technological security protocols. The novel trust agent provides the e-service consumer with an objective measure of the trustworthiness of the e-service at run-time, just prior to its actual consumption. Specifically, VO e-service consumer confidence level is informed, by leveraging third party objective evidence. This evidence comprises a set of Corporate Governance (CG) scores. These scores are used as a trust proxy for the "real" owner of the VO. There are also inherent limitations associated with the use of CG scores. These are duly acknowledged

Flow-based reputation: more than just ranking

The last years have seen a growing interest in collaborative systems like electronic marketplaces and P2P file sharing systems where people are intended to interact with other people. Those systems, however, are subject to security and operational risks because of their open and distributed nature. Reputation systems provide a mechanism to reduce such risks by building trust relationships among entities and identifying malicious entities. A popular reputation model is the so called flow-based model. Most existing reputation systems based on such a model provide only a ranking, without absolute reputation values; this makes it difficult to determine whether entities are actually trustworthy or untrustworthy. In addition, those systems ignore a significant part of the available information; as a consequence, reputation values may not be accurate. In this paper, we present a flow-based reputation metric that gives absolute values instead of merely a ranking. Our metric makes use of all the available information. We study, both analytically and numerically, the properties of the proposed metric and the effect of attacks on reputation values

Study Of Stability And Antifragility Of Reputation In View Of Multi-vector Character Of Reputation Management Of Enterprises

The paper is devoted to the development of fundamental bases of the reputation management of enterprises and elaboration of its methodological and methodical support. There was offered to use “antifragility” conception in the reputation management of an enterprise that allows to activate the cooperation with key stakeholders and to trace the effectiveness of managerial arrangements. At that reputation antifragility that is the ability to its self-support is a criterion of effectiveness of the reputation management of an enterprise. The projection of Taleb\u27s conception on the reputation management of enterprises provides the management balance (as a purposeful formation of an enterprise reputation) and self-management balance (as a spontaneous formation of an enterprise reputation) at the conceptual level. At that in the aspect of the economic approach, “antifragility of an enterprise reputation” is not equal to the notion “anticrisis enterprise management”, where the last one reproduces the process of counteraction to crisis phenomena. The features of reputation antifragility are considered as: stability as a closest synonym of antifragility; while assessing a reputation, it is necessary to take into account its ability to resist rare destructive events; anticrisis (crisis) reputation management as a necessary but not enough method of providing antifragility of an enterprise reputation; informational transparency and its necessity to form an antifragile enterprise reputation. The research results demonstrate that the management decentralization, limitation of the direct managerial impact is a necessary condition to provide reputation “antifragility” that is its ability of self-restoration, strengthening and self-increment as a result of the conscious use of stressors. The way of the solution of the methodological problem of the natural “management deficit” in complicated multi-vector systems in the context of the theory of the reputation management is the model of the reputation management decentralization by transferring the part of functions from managers to stakeholders

Debt financing and firm performance: The moderating role of board independence

This article investigates the moderating role of board independence in the relationship between debt financing and performance of emerging market firms. We have used an empirical model in which the firm’s accounting profitability is a dependent variable and the independent variables are debt financing, board independence, the interaction variable made of debt financing and board independence as well as various control variables. Our analysis is based on a panel data set of 300 listed firms in Vietnam between 2013 and 2017. Our study finds that debt financing has a significantly negative effect and that board independence reduces the adverse impact of debt financing on accounting profitability. Our results are consistent across different estimation models and methods