Reputation to understand society

• Published in: Computational and mathematical organization theory 2014-06, Vol.20 (2), p.211-217
• Main Authors: Paolucci, Mario, Sichman, Jaime Simão
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Artificial Intelligence; Business and Management; Collaboration; Discipline; Game theory; Individual and society; Interdisciplinary aspects; Management; Methodology of the Social Sciences; Ontology; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Organization theory; Physics; Public opinion; Reputations; Science; Si: Icore2011; Social norms; Social relations; Social unrest; Society; Sociology; Studies; Trust
• ISSN: 1381-298X; 1572-9346
• DOI: 10.1007/s10588-013-9168-8

Reputation is commonly dened as the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone.1 As such, reputation is the prototypical representative of social artifacts that we use to make sense out of social complexity. It shares with norms, responsibility, power, and trustto cite our own favorite examplesthe characteristic of making sense only in a social context. Reputation places itself in the most abstract position among these social artifacts. Why is it so? Because when properly dened, reputation loosely connects with the object-level actions of the individual. First, in order to distinguish reputation in the proper sense, one must refer to some kind of majority rulesince it must be generally held. Second, reputation needs a model where the agent that elaborates and reasons on it must be endowed with a mind able to hold different levels of beliefs, since this agent must not confuse reputation with experience or evaluation. Third, while norms, power, trust and responsibility have all more or less direct connection.