Reputation

In this chapter, the role of reputation as a distributed instrument for social order is addressed. A short review of the state of the art will show the role of reputation in promoting (a) social control in cooperative contexts - like social groups and subgroups - and (b) partner selection in competitive contexts, like (e-) markets and industrial districts. In the initial section, current mechanisms of reputation - be they applied to electronic markets or MAS - will be shown to have poor theoretical backgrounds, missing almost completely the cognitive and social properties of the phenomenon under study. In the rest of the chapter a social cognitive model of reputation developed in the last decade by some of the authors will be presented. Its simulation-based applications to the theoretical study of norm-abiding behaviour, partner selection and to the refinement and improvement of current reputation mechanisms will be discussed. Final remarks and ideas for future research will conclude the chapte