A complex concept studied by scholars from a number of academic
disciplines. It is present in a business relationship when one partner
willingly depends on an exchanging partner in whom one has confidence. The term
“depend” can take on a number of meanings in this context, including the
willingness of one partner to be vulnerable to the actions of the other
partner, or the expectation of one partner to receive ethically bound behaviors
from the other partner. Security issues regarding Information Technology center
on maintaining trust in e-commerce transactions.
A case of breach of trust occurred in March 2005. Harvard
Business School administration said that as a result of unauthorized
intrusions, it planned to reject 119 applicants who followed a crackerÂ’s instructions to break into
the schoolÂ’s admission Internet site to see whether they had been accepted into
the university. The behavior was cited by the schoolÂ’s administration as being
unethical and breaching trust. Other universities took similar punitive
approaches to such breaches, including Carnegie Mellon UniversityÂ’s Tepper
School of Business. These universities and others similarly affected used the
ApplyYourself online application and notification software.
See Also:
Cracker.
Associated Press. Business Schools: Harvard to Bar 119 Applicants Who Hacked
Admissions Site. The Globe and Mail,
March 9, 2005, p. B12; Mayer, R., Davis, J., and F. Schoorman. An Integrative
Model of Organizational Trust. Academy of Management Review, vol. 20, 1995, p.
709–734; Moorman, C., Deshpande, R. and G. Zaltman. Factors Affecting Trust in
Market Research Relationships. Journal
of Marketing, vol. 57, 1993, p. 81–101.
