=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3645/forum2
|storemode=property
|title=Implications of trust in digital business ecosystem design: A systematic analysis
of roles
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3645/forum2.pdf
|volume=Vol-3645
|authors=Irina Rychkova,Jelena Zdravkovic,Janis Stirna
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ifip8-1/RychkovaZS23
}}
==Implications of trust in digital business ecosystem design: A systematic analysis
of roles
==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3645/forum2.pdf
Implications of trust in digital business ecosystem design:
A systematic analysis of roles
Irina Rychkova1, Jelena Zdravkovic2 and Janis Stirna2
1
University Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, 75005, France
2
Stockholm University, Kista, SE-16407, Sweden
Abstract
Digital technologies enable novel models of social and business interactions, where trust becomes a critical
design consideration. A thorough analysis of trust issues and their implications at different enterprise levels,
including strategies, processes and technological solutions, becomes an imperative part of socio-technical
systems design. In this study we examine trust issues that emerge among the actors of a Digital Business
Ecosystems (DBE) which, if not properly addressed, can jeopardize DBE functioning and resilience. An
explicit mapping between the generic DBE roles and the social factors of trustworthiness is the main
contribution of this work. We demonstrate how this mapping is used in the analysis of trust issues in the
context of a Higher Education Alliance DBE. This analysis leads to the identification of explicit
trustworthiness requirements that can guide (re)design of DBE strategies, processes and technical platforms.
Keywords
Enterprise Design, Trust, Trustworthiness requirements, Business Network Modeling, Digital Business
Ecosystem, DBE Roles 1
1. Introduction
Business ecosystem refers to the interconnected business network of organizations and individuals
that interact with and influence each other within a particular industry or market. It encompasses the
complex web of relationships, resources, and interactions among various entities that collectively
contribute to the functioning and success of the overall business environment. With the digital
transformation and the increasing role of digital technologies in social interactions, the concept of
digital business ecosystem (DBE) has emerged. In a DBE, entities interact and collaborate using digital
technologies, and leverage data and information as key assets [1, 2].
DBEs are characterized by their dynamic and rapidly evolving nature. They require effective
governance mechanisms to ensure fairness, trust, and accountability among the participants.
Governance involves setting common rules, standards, and protocols for data exchange, resource
sharing, and collaboration, as well as resolving conflicts, ensuring compliance, and managing risks
within the DBE. A key aspect of DBEs is the diversity of actors and the roles they fulfill: in addition
to the roles acting in traditional business networks, such as supplier, customer, and end user, DBEs
rely in addition on some specific ones, such as for example - the driver role, for managing the tools
that support the DBE; a governor, for providing and/or defining the standards and policies; a
reputation guardian - for assessing all DBE actors' trustworthiness, reliability, solvency, and
worthiness; as well as several other roles [3].
In DBE digital technology (“D”) acts as a mediator in interactions between the ecosystem
participants, with the expectation of increasing trust between them and for providing them with a
positive experience [4]. Trust plays a crucial role in the functioning of a DBE, for its resilience. It
Companion Proceedings of the 16th IFIP WG 8.1 Working Conference on the Practice of Enterprise Modeling and the 13th
Enterprise Design and Engineering Working Conference, November 28 – December 1, 2023, Vienna, Austria
irina.rychkova@univ-paris1.fr (I. Rychkova); jelenaz@dsv.su.se (J. Zdravkovic); js@dsv.su.se (J. Stirna)
0000-0002-1100-0116 (I. Rychkova); 0000-0002-0870-0330 (J. Zdravkovic); 0000-0002-3669-832X (J. Stirna)
© 2023 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR
ceur-ws.org
Workshop ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
provides the foundation upon which participants collaborate and share resources and as such it is a
critical design consideration for the DBE supporting digital platforms. Identifying, modeling and
analyzing trust relations among social and technical DBE entities is a vital design step, which requires
adequate Enterprise Modeling methods and practices. Explicit analysis of trust issues in a DBE has an
impact on the DBE strategy, as it can be used to identify partners and their needs in terms of trust; on
the DBE operations as it can affect the processes between DBE partners; and on the DBE technology,
as it can help to design relevant components and to make technological choices.
In social science, trust is described as a situation in which an individual or an organization (trustor)
is willing to rely on the chosen actions of another individual or organization (trustee) [5]. According
to Mayer et al. [6], ability, benevolence, and integrity are the factors of (perceived) trustworthiness
that characterize a trustee. In the technical domain, trust defines relationships between an individual
and a technological component (trust in technology) and describes the interactions between the
entities in the digital world (digital trust). Here the (perceived) trustworthiness is often connotated
with security, reliability, and authenticity of digital systems, platforms, or transactions.
The gap between the social and technical definitions of trust arises due to the challenges of
translating a subjective, context-dependent nature of social trust into objective, measurable terms
that can be addressed by technical mechanisms. While technical (or digital) trust can provide a
foundation for secure and reliable digital interactions, it may not fully capture the complexities of
social trust that arise from human relationships, emotions, and cultural factors.
DBEs are inherently socio-technical systems, and addressing trust in DBE requires a holistic
approach that integrates both social and technical dimensions of trust. Bridging the gap between
these dimensions involves recognizing the interplay between different types of trust, understanding
the subjective and contextual nature of trust issues, and leveraging both social and technical
mechanisms to foster trust in DBEs. The goal of this work is to explicitly address trust and its
implications in DBE design.
In this paper, we examine the roles of DBE and discuss their trust relationships. First, we associate
the DBE roles with social trustworthiness factors. To bridge the gap between the social and technical
dimensions of trust, we propose a mapping of (social) trust issues into trustworthiness requirements
(TwR) that can guide DBE design. We define trustworthiness requirements as the expectations of one
actor (trustor) about trustworthiness of another actor (trustee) in a DBE. We demonstrate our findings
with a case study of European universities forming a higher-education (HE) alliance, which fulfills
the main criteria for being considered a DBE. We examine the trust building process among the actors
of this DBE, focusing on the implications on the supporting information systems. We formulate the
following research questions:
• RQ1: What are the social factors of trust defining relationships among DBE actors?
• RQ2: What are the trustworthiness requirements that guide the design and development of a
DBE and its supporting systems for the case of a HE alliance?
In order to formulate the TwR for a particular role in the HE alliance DBE, first, we analyze the
trust issues expressed by a corresponding DBE participant and their (social) trust factors, then we use
a reference list of TwR derived from the literature [7] and identify relevant generic requirements.
Finally, we illustrate how these generic requirements can be contextualized for the HE alliance. The
proposed approach bridges the gap between the social and technical dimensions of trust and supports
business and technology experts in guiding their design decisions and technological choices.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows: in section 2, we discuss the background of
this study and its related works; in section 3, we provide a mapping of the generic DBE roles on the
trustworthiness factors defined in social science. We also describe our approach for trustworthiness
requirements elicitation. In section 4 we present our findings on the case study of higher-education
alliance. In section 5 we discuss our results and provide our conclusions.
2. Background and related work
2.1. Trust
In the research literature on trust, the act of trust is represented as a relationship between a subject
(the trustor) and an object of trust (the trustee) [5, 6, 8]. Outcome of trust is defined as an interaction
between trustor and trustee and is characterized by the resulting experience (negative or positive).
Antecedents of trust refer to the factors that influence trustor’s willingness to trust and include factors
related to the subject (trustor’s propensity to trust), to the object (trustworthiness of the trustee) and
to the environment where interaction between the subject and the object takes place (e.g.,
institutional trust) [6, 8, 9]. In this study, we consider trustor’s propensity to trust and institutional
trust as invariant for a given interaction. Our primary focus is on trustworthiness of the trustee as a
design variable.
Whereas researchers in social sciences focus on trust between social entities (individuals, groups
or organizations), in IS research, trust is considered as a socio-technical concept, i.e., it is defined as
a relationship between social entities and technological components (information systems,
applications, infrastructure, etc.), in which a technological component can be either an object (trustee)
or a subject (trustor).
In modern organizations, social trust remains an important determinant of collaboration and
decision making. With a constant digital transformation, trust issues that occur among social actors
on the strategic and operational levels of the organizations are often addressed by socio-technical
solutions developed by the IT, creating a gap between the social and technology-centric perspectives
of trust. To bridge this gap, it is important to recognize the multidimensional nature of trust and
consider the social and cultural contexts in which technological systems are developed and used [4].
Three forms of trust are widely recognized in the literature: social trust, digital trust, and trust in
technology. Social (or interpersonal) trust is defined as the subjective probability that a trustee has
the required capacity and willingness to perform an action that is beneficial or at least not detrimental
to another entity - a trustor - in a specific context [5]. Digital trust defines relationships between
entities in the digital world. It is the measure of confidence that a trustor has in the trustee's ability
to protect data and privacy of individuals [10]. Trust in technology reflects the trustor’s beliefs that a
specific technology has the attributes necessary to perform as expected in a given situation where
negative consequences are possible [8, 11]. Table 1 presents a summary of these three types of trust,
their associated trustworthiness factors and outcomes.
Table 1
Overview of trust perspectives and types
Type of Trustor Trustee
View: Trustworthiness factors Outcome
Trust (subject) (object)
Org. / Org. / Ability, benevolence, Interaction /
Social
Social Trust
Individual Individual integrity collaboration
Trust in Org. / Functionality, helpfulness,
IT object Acceptance, use
Technology Individual usefulness, reliability
Org. /
IT object Privacy, security, Interaction /
Digital Individual
Technical
transparency, traceability, transaction in digital
Trust
Org. / control environnement
IT object
Individual
IT object IT object
2.1.1. Trust: Social perspective
It addresses the (social) context where the trust issues among the actors arise. [6] defines trust
antecedents and outcomes in their integrative model of organizational trust. The authors define the
trust for a trustee as “a function of the trustee's perceived ability, benevolence, and integrity and of
the trustor's propensity to trust.” Propensity to trust is an intrinsic characteristic of a trustor, which
can be considered as invariant. Ability, integrity and benevolence are the factors of trustworthiness
that characterize a trustee; they depend on the context and the nature of a given trustor-trustee
interaction. According to [6], ability defines a group of skills, competencies, and characteristics that
enable a trustee to have influence within some specific domain; benevolence defines the extent to
which a trustee is believed to want to do good to the trustor, aside from an egocentric profit motive;
integrity refers to trustee’s moral quality of being sincere and his/her willingness to adhere to some
rules and principles. Social trust is used as the basis for decision-making in diverse contexts, including
enterprise strategy, governance of operations, and technology [12].
2.1.2. Trust: Technical perspective
Digital trust and trust in technology define trust in the technological domain. The trustworthiness
factors of technology include usability, functionality, helpfulness, reliability and credibility of
information [8, 11], as well as customizability and adaptability [4]. Digital trust reflects the trustor's
beliefs that a trustee (a social entity or an IT object) has the attributes necessary to support secured
digital interactions [10]. Trustworthiness factors in digital trust include privacy, security,
transparency, traceability, control [13, 14].
2.1.3. Bridging the gap between the social and technical views on trust
While trustworthiness factors of digital trust and trust in technology can be formalized, measured
and used to provide a foundation for technological solutions, they may not fully capture the
complexities of social trust that arise from human relationships, emotions, and cultural factors. Thus,
an explicit mapping between technological and social perspectives of trust is of great importance.
Requirements engineering (RE) discipline plays a crucial role in design and development of socio-
technical systems. The RE process involves understanding the stakeholders' needs and expectations,
as well as the social and organizational context in which the system will operate [15, 16]. We address
trustworthiness of the trustee in socio-technical systems from the RE perspective. Here, trustor's
expectations regarding the trustee's trustworthiness can be expressed as trustworthiness requirements
(TwR). We define TwR as a statement made by a trustor about the expected trustworthiness of a
trustee. A TwR has to clearly express an operational, functional, design or other characteristic, which,
according to trustor’s beliefs, positively impacts trustworthiness of this trustee and interaction
between the two. TwR can be met by incorporating certain attributes, features, or properties by the
trustee, whether a social entity or a technological solution. TwR can be eventually refined into
conventional FR, NFR, process requirements or contracts. The interest in requirements related to trust
is not new: in [16], trust is considered as a part of soft requirements (SR) and is associated with the
aspects of the social system where a technological system is used – its context; in [17], trustworthiness
requirements are defined as a special class of quality requirements and relate trust with other
concepts such as capability, vulnerability and risk; in [22], the role of trustworthiness in the software
development lifecycle is examined and a process for elicitation and analysis of TwR is proposed. The
work presented in [21] explicitly addresses TwR in supply chain management.
In this study, we examine the social trustworthiness factors that define interactions among DBE
actors. First, we provide a mapping between these factors and generic DBE roles. Then, using the case
study, we illustrate how the trustworthiness factors of the trustee in a DBE can be addressed by the
TwRs. As a result, we identify requirements that need to be met by the DBE roles and their supporting
digital solutions, providing guidance for DBE design and evolution.
2.2. Digital business ecosystems (DBE) and roles in DBE
Actors, roles, capabilities, relationships, and digital components are essential elements of DBE [3].
The actors are individuals and organizations that take part in a DBE by fulfilling specific roles
according to their capabilities. The interactions between the DBE actors are supported and mediated
by different digital components such as the ecosystem digital platform and its services, smart devices,
cloud storage, and other.
Roles of archetypal kind are of a high significance for the ecosystem’s design as they define the
DBE-specific responsibilities of the actors involved and provide underlying knowledge for the
capabilities relevant to a DBE. In [3], the authors surveyed the relevant literature to identify the DBE
roles and their responsibilities, leading to the following ones (Table 2).
Table 2
DBE roles and their responsibilities [3]
DBE role Responsibility
Driver sets up a common vision for all actors in a DBE;
provides and manages a digital platform;
optimizes entry barriers for joining a DBE;
acquires and retain actors within a DBE;
provides end-products and services to customers and end-users;
collects and raise end users’ events and feedback;
ensures an integrated end user experience.
Aggregator collects and combines capabilities and resources within a DBE into end-products or
services, created by Modular Producer and Complementor, for offering to
Customers and End-Users.
Modular provides resources within a DBE; resources can be products, services, or
Producer knowledge, created by the producer’s capabilities.
Comple- using its capabilities, provides resources that complement the core resources within
mentor a DBE, with some added-value features.
Customer buys end-products and services offered in a DBE.
End-User consumes end-products and services offered in a DBE;
provides information about its events and feedback to other DBE roles.
Governor oversees all the actors within a DBE by defining normative artifacts, such as
decisions, policies, guidelines, and ethics, related to the business concern of the
DBE.
Reputation surveys and assesses all DBE actors' trustworthiness, reliability, solvency, and
Guardian worthiness.
3. Analysis of trust issues and identification of trustworthiness
requirements in DBE
3.1. Research approach
This study follows the Design Science Research [18] and aims at developing a framework for the trust
management in DBE types of business networks – the targeted design artifact. The need for managing
trust and hence for this design artefact is expressed in [3, 19], where trust is identified as one of the
important aspects of DBE design. This study paves the ground for developing the trust management
framework for DBE. In this article, we report on the initial cycle of artifact design, which includes
the problem identification and the framework components design and development. The theoretical
view on the problem was presented in [7]; this paper is grounded on the case study and focuses on
the empirical view of the problem.
We conduct a structured analysis of the archetype DBE roles and identify the trustworthiness
factors that determine the interactions between these roles. The resulting mapping (Table 3) is one of
the framework components developed in this study. Following the identified trustworthiness factors,
we proceed with identification of trustworthiness requirements (TwR) that can be further
operationalized (i.e., implemented as a part of an interactive process or a supporting information
system between the corresponding DBE roles). To this end, we propose and follow a process for trust
analysis (Section 3.3). This process takes trust issues expressed by the specific DBE actors as an input
and leads to identification of their corresponding TwR. To support the trust analysis, we use a set of
generic TwR from [7].
We demonstrate the designed artifact by examining trust in the Higher-Education Alliance DBE
– our case study (Section 4). In this article, we provide the results of trust analysis for the Modular
Producer role in this DBE. In particular, we show the trust issues (collected from the case),
trustworthiness factors (application of our mapping), generic TwR (from [7]) and specific
(contextualized) TwR defined for this role. Completeness of the elaborated set of requirements as
well as their prioritization are not discussed in this study. This will be addressed during the following
(validation) cycle of DSR.
3.2. Trustworthiness factors in DBE
In DBE, trust relationships are formed among their participants (social entities) and can be
characterized by the following: (i) several entities can share the same DBE role and each entity can
fulfill several DBE roles; (ii) within different interactions, each DBE role can be considered as a trustor
(one who trusts) or as a trustee (one to be trusted).
Following [6], ability, integrity, and benevolence are the factors of trustworthiness that influence
a decision of one DBE role (trustor) to engage into an interaction with another DBE role (trustee).
The impact of ability, integrity, and benevolence on building trust can vary depending on the context
of this interaction. More specifically, consider a situation 1, where the two individuals X and Y are
respectively a patient (trustor) and a physician (trustee), and a situation 2, where the same X and Y
are playing cards together: in situation 1, the Y’s ability (i.e., medical proficiency and qualification)
can be a major trustworthiness factor for X, whereas in situation 2, it will be rather Y’s integrity
(honesty, compliance with the rules). Based on that, the third characteristic of trust relationships in
DBE is: (iii) Trustworthiness factors defined by a trustor for a trustee within an interaction in DBE
depend on the context of this interaction and on the DBE roles they play within this interaction (as
defined in Table 2).
Table 3
Social trustworthiness factors in the relationships to the DBE roles
Trustors (subject)
Complementor
Aggregator
Reputation
Customer
Governor
Guardian
End User
Producer
Modular
Driver
Driver A B, I A A, B, I A A A, I A, I A, B, I
Aggregator A, I I A, I A, I A, I A A, I A, B, I
Modular A, I A I A, I A A A, I A, B, I
Trustee (object)
Producer
Complementor A, I A A, I n/a A A, I, B A, I A, B, I
Customer I I I I I I I I
End User n/a n/a n/a A, I n/a n/a A, I I
Governor I, B I, B I, B I, B I, B I, B A, B, I A, B, I
Reputation B B B B I, B B A, I n/a
Guardian
Based on our previous studies on DBEs [3, 19, 20], we analyze trustor-trustee relationships
between different DBE roles and identify the major social trustworthiness factors in trust building
between these roles. The results are illustrated in Table 3. Each cell {i,j} defines a trustworthiness
factor (or factors) for an interaction between the two DBE roles: role i (as a trustor) and role j (as a
trustee). For example, the third column of the table defines the trustworthiness factors for a DBE
Modular producer (MP) role towards the other roles in the DBE with which the MP interacts as a
trustor.
The MP (trustor) - Driver (trustee) interaction in DBE is important to ensure consistent
development and evolution of a service or product provided by the DBE. A, B, I in the cell {3,1} indicate
that all the three factors – ability, benevolence and integrity - need to be considered when designing
processes and digital platforms supporting and mediating their interactions.
Trustworthiness factors in MP – Aggregator and MP - Complementor interactions (cells {3,2}{3,4}
in Table 3) include ability (A) (e.g., skills/competences of an aggregator to collect and combine
capabilities and resources within a DBE) and integrity (I) (e.g., aggregator’s honesty, capacity to
adhere to the rules defined by DBE).
Integrity (I) is the major factor in MP – MP and MP - Customer interactions (cells {3,3}{3,5} in Table
3). Here, integrity of MP refers to their perceived honesty in delivering a high-quality service/product.
Customers’ integrity refers to their perceived honesty and compliance with the rules.
Trustworthiness factors in MP - Governor interactions include benevolence (B) and integrity (I).
This is related to the responsibility of the governor as a trustee, which is to oversee all the actors
within a DBE (Table 2).
Benevolence (B) is the major factor in MP - Reputation guardian interactions. The responsibility
of the reputation guardian as a trustee is to survey and assess all DBE actors (see Table 2) and
benevolence (e.g., a belief that this evaluation will be fair) provides a major contribution in building
trust in these interactions.
Trustworthiness factors are not applicable to MP (trustor) - End user (trustee) interactions
(indicated n/a in the cell {3,6}) since, by definition, MP role in DBE does not “rely on” or “become
vulnerable from” the End user. Note that the opposite is not true: End user as a trustee has to trust
the MP's ability to produce a competitive, relevant service or product. This is reflected by the ability
(A) trustworthiness factor in Table 3 (cell {6,3}). The rest of the table can be interpreted the similar
way.
3.3. Analysis of trust in DBE
Table 3 maps the trustworthiness factors on DBE roles and identifies the major social factors of trust
in the interactions among DBE partners. To support digital interactions between DBE partners, these
factors need to be contextualized and refined into specific TwRs. We propose the following process
for trust analysis in DBEs.
Consider an interaction between two specific DBE actors and the roles they play in this
interaction:
1. Identify trust issue(s) of a trustor actor. This step is context-specific and can vary for different
partners in the DBE. The working approach can be: empirical analysis of DBE design and
operations or interviews with stakeholders.
2. Identify the trustworthiness factors of the trustee role related to this issue. This step is
context-independent and defined for generic roles in DBE, c.f. Table 3.
3. Formulate TwR that express trustor’s expectations about trustee’s (social) trustworthiness
factors from step 2 by using (technical) trustworthiness properties (i.e., system or process
qualities). This step can be considered as a context design. Here we are working with
engineers of the DBE to analyze the existing DBE design. The requirements can be extracted
from this context or identified using a more generic reference list, derived from the previous
experiences or from the literature.
4. Contextualize the TwRs by associating them with the trust issues identified in step 1. In this
step, we are focusing on specific requirements of actors and the DBE as a whole. Here, the
TwRs from step 3 are refined following the interviews with the actors’ representatives and
analysis of the usage data.
The expected outcome of this process is a set of explicit, contextualized TwRs that provide a
reference to the social context and identify an operational, functional, design or other characteristic,
which, according to trustor’s beliefs, positively impacts the trustworthiness of this trustee and
interaction between the two. In the following section we illustrate this process with the case study of
Higher-Education Alliance DBE.
4. Case study: Higher-Education Alliance
4.1. About alliances in Europe
During the past decade a plethora of university alliances in the domain of higher education have
emerged, with more than 40 of such alliances in Europe. Some alliances focus mainly on student
mobility (e.g., Erasmus+), while others are aiming at a united Europe university both in terms of
teaching and research (e.g., CIVIS, 4EU+, Una Europa). The latter type is featured in our case study
(by the active participation of the authors in one of the outlined alliances). Through their activities
and collaboration, these alliances strive to actively promote fundamental rights, solidarity,
democracy, social cohesion, cultural diversity, and active citizenship. Therefore, the business
foundation of the HE alliances could be condensed into the following knowledge square: Education,
Research, Innovation and Civic Engagement. The alliances are typically co-funded by the EU
Commission and the member universities.
HE alliances perform and coordinate an extensive number and variety of activities including
development of educational programs and modules at Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD levels; student,
teacher, and researcher mobility; educational and scientific calls and events; thematic working nodes,
theme-labs, promotion-related activities, governance, management of the digital infrastructure.
4.2. The roles and responsibilities of the DBE participants
HE alliances conform to the concept of DBE, because they consist of a large number of independent
and self-organizing actors collaborating on various business objectives on a DBE level as well as
individually. A key aspect of DBEs is actors acting in complementary roles, which is essential to
maintain DBE’s long-term resilience. Table 4 shows the mapping of the common actors of an HE
alliance to their corresponding DBE roles and responsibilities.
Table 4
Actors and roles in the DBE of HE alliance
Actor Description Role in Responsibility in DBE
DBE
European The financier of an Governor, To control the use of fundings,
Commission alliance. Reputation monitoring of the progress, alliance
Guardian promoter in EU forum
University Alliance member, Driver Each university member leads one
from a European responsibility (Table 2, Driver), or all
university are responsible for some
Faculty teacher, Academic staff of the Modular To develop and teach course
researcher participating Producer curriculum
universities
Node Thematic entity Aggregator To propose course curriculum, assign
tasks to modular producers and
monitor development.
Lab Forum for universities, Compleme To organize events (conferences,
businesses, citizens to ntor seminars), present curriculum, etc.
meet
Steering Administrative staff of Governor To make decisions on operative levels,
Committee participating to coordinate communications and
universities. tasks of the universities.
Consultative City and regional Governor To make cooperation decisions that
Council representatives, would be applied across the
citizens, and the participating regions
presidents of the
member universities
Student Council A group of student Governor To collect and disseminate student
representatives from voices for the best interests of
different university students: it listens, exchanges and
members proposes ideas on how the alliance
should develop.
Student A person registered End-User To attend campus and online courses,
for studying at a take examinations, to do course
member university evaluation
Student First-contact Reputation To provide information about the
Ambassador student(s) at every Guardian alliance to potentially interested
member university. students.
Business Regional organizations Customer To sponsor and attend some events of
member and companies the alliance, provide guest lectures,
etc.
Citizen Regional citizens Customer To support co-creation of knowledge
related to the curriculum content,
collaboration with business, and other.
Communication The alliance Reputation To encourage the participation of all
Office representative office Guardian stakeholders in building the
in EC envisioned university model.
4.3. Trust analysis for the Educational Alliance
In this section, we provide the trust analysis for the Modular Producer role (a faculty teacher or
researcher) in a HE Alliance DBE. For the sake of brevity, we do not provide the analysis for the other
roles in this paper.
Following the process of trust analysis (Section 3.3), we illustrate (1) the trust issues identified in
the interactions between Modular producer (as trustor) and other roles in the HE alliance DBE
(trustees) and (2) provide their mapping to the trustworthiness factors of DBE roles from Table 3.
Next, in (3), we use the taxonomy proposed in [7] as a reference to formulate our TwR about the
trustworthiness factors identified in (2). This taxonomy associates ability, integrity and benevolence
with 21 TwRs derived from the literature. Finally, in (4), we contextualize the identified TwRs for the
MP in the HE alliance. The summary of this analysis is presented in Table 5.
Modular producers (MP) in the HE alliance are members of teaching and research staff responsible
for creating content for educational programs (course materials, practical works, projects etc.) and
delivering the program to the end users. When creating common courses, one of the challenges is to
ensure alignment, consistency, and uniform quality of the course modules among different MPs.
Therefore, an issue expressed by a trustor-MP towards the other MPs (trustees) is:
1. I am concerned with the quality of modules provided by other modular producers. This issue is
associated with integrity (I) of the MP role as a trustee in Table 3.
Another challenge is related to aggregation, dissemination and reuse of developed materials
within common space, which are ensured by Aggregator (a node) as a trustee:
2. I am worried that the development of a common course will not follow the established milestones
and deadlines. This issue is associated with integrity (I) and ability (A) of the Aggregator role
in Table 3;
3. I want to make sure the aggregator will not put me in competition with another modular
producers - associated with integrity (I);
4. I am concerned that, within a common course, my content can be used or modified without my
knowledge - associated with integrity (I);
5. I am concerned about the integration efforts and evolution of my content: upload, update,
formatting should be ensured by the aggregator - associated with ability.
Once the program is developed, MPs are also concerned with its running. The following example
illustrates the trust concerns towards Driver (a university) as a trustee:
6. I am concerned that the digital platform for course provisioning and communication with
students will work without errors - associated with the trustee’s ability (A).
Towards Complementor (a lab, a third-party technology provider for) as a trustee:
7. I am concerned with the quality of supporting services and their price (e.g., Virtual classrooms,
examination tools) delivered by the complementor - associated with the trustee's ability (A).
Towards Reputation Guardian (communication office in HE alliance):
8. I am concerned that a fair number of students, with adequate background and academic records
will be attending the course - associated with benevolence (B) of a Reputation guardian.
Once the issues are identified (column 1 in Table 5) and associated with the trustworthiness factors
(column 2 in Table 5), we formulate the TwR of the MP (as a trustor) towards the DBE (column 3 in
Table 5). In [7], a taxonomy of TwR is proposed. This taxonomy associates the (social) trustworthiness
factors with technical features of solutions. We use the TwR from this source as a reference. For
example, issue 1 can be associated with Auditability TwR. Once relevant TwR are identified, they
need to be contextualized (column 4, in Table 5). For issue 1, we propose the following
contextualization of the Auditability TwR: Any faculty teacher in the node must be able to validate the
quality of the class materials produced by their peers. Every faculty teacher has to demonstrate the quality
of the produced course materials.
Note that the issues can vary among the actors playing the same DBE role (e.g., different teachers
in HE alliance); they can also be shared between the roles in the DBE (e.g., issue 2 is shared by the
MP and the driver role).
The process above needs to be conducted for all DBE participants to collect the list of issues and
requirements for each relevant trustor-trustee interaction in the DBE.
Table 5
Trust analysis for HE Alliance Modular producers.
(2) (3) TwR of reference (4) Contextualized TwR of reference
1 I Auditability: Trustor must be able to Any faculty teacher (Modular Producer)
validate the trustee’s compliance with the in the node must be able to validate the
rules (e.g., by executing the audit, quality of the class materials produced by
supervising the examining the execution their peers: fit to the program, alignment
traces, supervising the trustee's process at between the modules, etc. Every faculty
run time). teacher should be able to demonstrate the
quality of the produced course materials.
2 A, Performance: Trustee must ensure an A node (Aggregator) creates the
I efficient distribution of resources, with educational programs, with respect to the
respect of defined timeframe and budget. program calendar and budget set by the
Compliance: Trustee has to adhere to rules, steering committee (Governor).
agreements or regulations. A node acts according to the rules defined
by the steering committee (Governor) and
uses the standard solutions (e.g., digital
Integrity: Trustee must ensure correct and portal) delivered by a leading university
timely execution of activities, with respect (Driver).
to contract or process specifications. A node demonstrates the program
evolution to the steering committee and
informs the students and faculty teachers
about problems.
3 I Traceability: Trustor has to access all Faculty teacher and faculty researcher has
information related to provenance of a to be able to access all the information
physical or information object accurately related to other modular producers and to
and trace it to its source. trace the produced content.
4 I Transparency: Trustee’s workflow must be A node’s course development plan (e.g.,
transparent and documented. Trustee must workflow) must be transparent to the
provide an accessible and non-repudiable faculty teachers and explicitly
audit trail showing use, change and documented.
viewing of the data. A node must ensure the overall accuracy,
Integrity (data): Trustee must ensure the completeness, and consistency of
accuracy, completeness, and consistency of produced content over its entire life-
data over its entire life-cycle. cycle.
5 A Automation of data processing: Trustee A node must minimize physical and
must minimize physical and maximize maximize digital processing of course
digital processing of data. materials and to enable students (End-
Interoperability: Trustee must show a User) to access it remotely.
capability to work with trustor. A node must be able to process, store and
correctly integrate any numeric content
from the faculty teachers.
6 A Availability: All resources and software Digital platform for student and course
components needed for process/activity management has to be available to
execution have to be available to the students and faculty teachers. The content
trustor, by the trustee. must be accessible which is ensured by
the designated university (Driver).
7 A Availability: All resources and software All resources and software components
components needed for process/activity needed for the course have to be available
execution have to be available to the by the digital platform through a
trustor. university, to faculty teachers.
Performance: Trustee must ensure an Lab (Complementor) must ensure an
efficient distribution of resources, with efficient distribution of resources, with
respect of defined timeframe and budget. respect to defined timeframe and budget.
8 B Accountability: Trustee is held responsible Steering committee is responsible for her
for her actions and cannot deny them. actions in marketing, dissemination of
Authentication (data): Trustor must be able the calls and student inscription to the
to determine the correctness and reliability program.
of reported data (e.g., messages, events). Faculty teachers must be able to
determine the correctness and reliability
of reported data (e.g.,
application/admission ratio, information
on the students).
5. Discussion and conclusions
Trust is a critical enabler of business interactions facilitating effective collaboration, efficient resource
utilization, adaptive behaviors, and collective effort towards common goals. Business networks, as
inherently socio-technical systems, require a holistic approach for trust analysis that integrates its
social and technical dimensions. This study attempts to bridge the gap between these dimensions by
incorporating the subjective and contextual nature of trust in DBE designs and management
principles. Identification and analysis of trust issues among the participants of a DBE is a crucial task
with a great impact on the DBE sustainability and resilience; it must be conducted upfront and it
requires adequate enterprise modeling methods and practices.
In this work, we proposed a framework for structured analysis of trust among the actors of DBE.
We focused on the implications on the supporting digital platforms pervading any business
interaction in a DBE setting. We consider that the proposed framework can be used to support
(re)design of DBE and its supporting digital platforms as follows:
• A list of requirements aggregated per Trustee-role provides a vision of what the DBE expects
from this given role.
• A list of requirements aggregated per Trustor-role provides a vision of what this particular
role expects from the DBE.
• Prioritization of the TwRs by identifying the TwRs most frequently expressed.
• Negotiation of the TwRs and identification of the minimal set of TwRs that will be satisfactory
for a particular DBE.
• Identification and assessment of alternative organizational and technical solutions to cover
the set of TwRs.
The study is a part of an overall Design Science Research project aiming to develop and implement
the models and methods for resilient DBE. Within this project, we are defining the artifacts needed
for incorporating the trust aspect into the DBE design: the identification and mapping of the social
trustworthiness factors on the DBE roles, and a process for trust analysis serving for deriving TwRs
specific to the ecosystem in design. The proposed artifacts were demonstrated to validate their
usability on the case of HE alliance - a typical example of a DBE, with its high autonomy, self-
organization, and cost balance principles. Concerning limitations to this study, we have performed
only the initial cycle of development – the problem has been analyzed in sufficient detail to establish
requirements for the artifact and its initial version has been developed and validated in an artificial
setting with real life case. While this gives input to assess the validity of the artefact in broad terms,
systematic evaluation in naturalistic setting is also needed.
The immediate next work will comprise further refinement of the framework and
experimentation, for example., on other DBEs, to assess possible improvements for the purpose of
evaluation of the framework in artificial setting which is to be followed by improvements to the
framework and the guidelines for use in order to integrate the framework with a method for DBE
design [23].
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