HICI: An Approach for Identifying Trust Elements The case of technological trust perspective in VBEs

The stability of a virtual organization breeding environment (VBE) requires the right balance of trust level among its members. Particularly for industry-based large-size VBEs and considering the global economy, organizations are now faced with the growing: value of information, uncertainties, and risks surrounding most businesses. As a result, creating a virtual organization (VO) within the VBE environment is becoming challenging and difficult. Establishing trust relationships among organizations in the VBE is now a promising facilitator for fluid VO creations. A priori to establishing trust relationships among member organizations however, trust levels of involved organizations must be properly assessed. In order to properly assess trust level of organizations in VBEs, trust elements and trust relationships must be thoroughly characterized. This paper presents a three-stage approach for identifying and analyzing trust elements. It also presents the general trust elements for three main trust objectives in VBEs, namely for creating trust: among VBE members, of the member to the VBE administration, and of the external stakeholder (e.g., a customer) to the VBE