The use of previous direct interactions is probably the best way to calculate a reputation but, unfortunately this information is not always available. This is especially true in large multi-agent systems where interaction is scarce. In this paper we present a reputation system that takes advantage, among other things, of social relations between agents to overcome this problem.

Reputation has been studied in many fields but few formal models have been defined up to now. In this paper we propose a new model for reputation that takes into account the social dimension of agents and a hierarchical ontology structure. This model is a natural extension of other models currently being used in the area of electronic commerce. We show how the model relates to these other systems and provide initial experimental results about the benefits of using a social view on the modeling of reputation.

Abstract. The scientific research in the area of computational mechanisms for trust and reputation in virtual societies is a recent discipline oriented to increase the reliability and performance of electronic communities. Computer science has moved from the paradigm of isolated machines to the paradigm of networks and distributed computing. Likewise, artificial intelligence is quickly moving from the paradigm of isolated and non-situated intelligence to the paradigm of situated, social and collective intelligence. The new paradigm of the so called intelligent or autonomous agents and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) together with the spectacular emergence of the information society technologies (specially reflected by the popularization of electronic commerce) are responsible for the increasing interest on trust and reputation mechanisms applied to electronic societies. This review wants to offer a panoramic view on current computational trust and reputation models.

this paper we describe how these techniques can be used to improve a reputation system and also how this system can be integrated with a negotiation model to increase the succes of negotiations

Abstract. In the field of multiagent systems (MAS), the computational models of trust and reputation have attracted increasing interest since electronic and open environments became a reality. In virtual societies of human actors very well-known mechanisms are already used to control non normative agents, for instance, the eBay scoring system. In virtual societies of artificial and autonomous agents, the same necessity arises, and several computational trust and reputation models have appeared in literature to cover this necessity. Typically, these models provide evaluations of agents ’ performance in a specific context, taking into account direct experiences and third party information. This last source of information is the communication of agents ’ own opinions. When dealing with cognitive agents endowed with complex reasoning mechanisms, we would like that these opinions could be justified in a way such that the resulting information was more complete and reliable. In this paper we present LRep, a language based on an existing ontology of reputation that allows building justifications of communicated social evaluations. 1

This is a first draft, please do not quote without permission Address for correspondence:

This paper examines the images of audit firms in Spain. Spain offers a valuable research context in that it is a relatively new audit market and one where the top company audits are not totally dominated by the large multinational audit firms, allowing for a comparison of the images of such firms against those associated with smaller, national audit firms. The findings of this survey are pertinent given the current level of debate internationally over the role, regulation and quality of auditing services and concerns over the potential impact of recent corporate scandals on auditor reputation Our study shows that the images of audit firms in Spain do differ on a number of dimensions, mostly concerned with the pricing of audit services and the spread of audit clients. Significantly, no differences were obtained in relation to the perceived competence or ethical standing of the large multinational and Spanish, national audit firms. The study also shows the areas of the audit firm’s corporate image where the actual image of the firm differs significantly from that desired by the management of their clients. Key words: Multinational and national audit firms, corporate image of audit firms, auditor reputation3

The role of organizational reputation (OR) was studied as a source of sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) and superior performance, theoretically and empirically, among local authorities in Israel. Using the LISREL VIII program, we proposed a mediation model that argued for a relationship between OR and financial performance, mediated by three tests for SCA: OR-value, OR-rareness and OR-inimitability. The effects of demographic and environmental variables on financial performance were also examined. Strong support was found for the resource-based view (RBV), maintaining that to achieve superior performance, organizations need to acquire SCA, which is dependent upon the core resources it possesses.

The research register for this journal is available at

This paper illustrates that emotion is integral to stakeholders ' perceptions of a key organizational artifact. Emotion-- both emotion toward the artifact and emotion toward the organization-- is shown to inhere in perceptions of three dimensions of artifacts and is thus suggested to be what connects between artifacts and their organizations. Multiple stakeholders were interviewed about an artifact of a large public transportation organization. Perceptions of the artifact, shown to be imbued with emotion, considered three conceptually distinct dimensions: instrumentality, aesthetics and symbolism. Instrumentality relates to the tasks the artifact helps accomplish, aesthetics is the sensory reaction to the artifact, and symbolism regards associations the artifact elicits. Our analysis illustrates these three dimensions and then demonstrates that the unsolicited emotion they entail regards both emotion toward the artifact and emotion toward the organization. In informants ' responses to open ended queries about the artifact there was no separation, but rather much spillover between emotion toward the artifact and emotion