Title: Towards a corporate governance trust agent scoring model for collaborative virtual organisations

Authors: Tim French, Nik Bessis, Fatos Xhafa, Carsten Maple

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Bedfordshire, LU1 3JU, Luton, UK; Informatics Research Centre, University of Reading, RG6 6AH, Reading, UK. ' School of Computing & Maths, University of Derby, DE22 1GB, Derby, UK; Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Bedfordshire, LU1 3JU, Luton, UK. ' Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of London (Birkbeck), London, WC1E 7HX, UK; Departament de Llenguatges i Sistemes Informatics, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. ' Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Bedfordshire, LU1 3JU, Luton, UK

Abstract: In this |visionary| 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 (VOs). 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 life cycle through the articulation of e-trust at various levels of system abstraction, including trust as a measurable confidence level. A novel trust agent is used to provide the consumer with an objective measure of the trustworthiness of the e-service at runtime, just prior to its actual consumption. Specifically, VO consumer confidence level is informed via a set of Corporate Governance (CG) scores, which are used as a trust proxy for the |real| owner of the VO.

Keywords: semiotic ladders; lightweight trust agents; scoring systems; corporate governance scores; past performance history; grid services; cloud computing; collaborative virtual organisations; context-aware trust; grid computing; collaboration; trust management; reputation management; e-services; electronic services; online services; trustworthiness.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGUC.2011.040597

International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing, 2011 Vol.2 No.2, pp.98 - 108

Received: 09 Jul 2010
Accepted: 21 Oct 2010

Published online: 28 Mar 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article