System Trust: Researching the Architecture of Trust in Systems (Repost)

Frequently enabled by digitalization, great transformations are taking place in socio-technical systems such as energy, telecommunications, and mobility. These transformations indicate widespread shifts in societal infrastructure systems, rearranging relations between governments, industries, NGOs, and consumers. In this context, the question of trust in systems – as introduced by sociologists Luhmann, Coleman and Giddens – acquires new urgency, as yet uncommented upon in trust research, or socio-technical systems debates. Focusing on the energy sector, Patrick Sumpf analyzes the meanings of system and trust to develop a framework for both theoretical and empirical research, which is synthesized into an “Architecture of Trust” in systems.
Contents

The Dualism of System Trust
Intersections in Trust Research
Open and Closed Systems
System Identity
Toward an ‘Architecture of Trust’
Case Study: Trust in the Energy System
Target Groups

Researchers and students in sociology, communications, psychology, management, trust research, and energy research
Consultants in energy policy and management
The Author

Patrick Sumpf holds a Dr. phil. in media and communication studies from Mannheim University, Germany. He is a research associate and project lead at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).