Design Science and eTrust: Designing organizational artifacts as nexus of social and technical interactions

Our research aims to investigate an open problem: the difficulty to build a virtual system in which trust-relationships can be created and managed. To address this problem in a manner consistent with the DS approach, we design a model for trust-based interactions in online distributed networks (e.g. online collaborative environments) that takes into consideration both technical and social factors. Simultaneously considering artifact’s characteristics and individual behavior, we build our model on the consideration that technology and social aspects are not dichotomous, but rather inseparable. The proposed model would offer a conceptual contribution in addressing the problem of generating and managing trust in distributed settings.