System Trust: Researching the Architecture of Trust in Systems

256 Pages·2019·7.89 MB·English

by  Patrick Sumpf

Patrick Sumpf
System Trust
Researching the Architecture
of Trust in Systems
System Trust
Patrick Sumpf
System Trust
Researching the Architecture
of Trust in Systems
With a foreword by Prof. Todd R. La Porte
Patrick Sumpf
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Karlsruhe, Germany
Dissertation University of Mannheim, Germany, 2017
ISBN 978-3-658-25627-2 ISBN 978-3-658-25628-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25628-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019933860
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Foreword
One of the persistent concerns threaded through our everyday lives attaches to
critical functions in services to citizens and consumers, such as energy provision
or internet connectivity. Can those of us who depend on these services count
predictably on their availability in times of need? Can we “trust the systems”
that enable and constrain our everyday lives?
In this work, Patrick Sumpf mounts a sustained examination of trust rela-
tionships at the impersonal macro-systemic level. It is the most comprehensive
effort to date to explicate the conditions that underlie these relations and which
vary the degree to which users (citizens and consumers) delegate the wide-rang-
ing interactions shaping daily life to large scale technical and social systems.
The study, prompted in part by changes in Germany as that nation carries out a
major transformation of its energy production and distribution networks, goes
beneath the physical modes of electricity production, coordination and service,
to focus on the social groups and dynamics of those who produce and consume,
and who are expected to “trust the system” enough to follow the received rules
of engagement, use and cooperation.
Sumpf offers an elaborated vocabulary of the factors, nuances and rela-
tional elements undergirding the perceptions and foundational interactions of
citizen-system trust dynamics – an “Architecture of Trust”. This is comple-
mented with a finely grained, empirically grounded examination of the percep-
tions of users regarding the grounds for trust and what might be the conditions
of institutional trustworthiness. (One can see the lineaments for application
across a number of domains other than energy.)
Citizens and consumers are quite likely to confront continuing develop-
ments in impersonal configurations that extend the range and depth of depend-
ence on trust-demanding system operations. As a consequence, the means to
calibrate deficits or surpluses of trust between those who are dependent upon
VI Foreword
large technical and social production systems and their corporate and public op-
erators take on heightened importance.
Sumpf’s work contributes markedly to conceptual frameworks that can aid
in clarifying the challenges that confront technical designers, managers and pub-
lic overseers. It adds to the grounds for imagining cautionary tales and analyses
of how “system” designers or developers consider their work and advocacy. And
it suggests refinements in understanding the social conditions that buttress the
trustworthiness of system leaders and deployers, as well as “system overseers”
(often public regulators). Finally, it amplifies the need to improve the bases for
recognizing institutional or organizational shortfalls in understanding how “so-
cio-technical systems” are experienced by those citizens and consumers who
delegate their choices to impersonal system interaction with little accountability
or potential for relief.
This is not a facile work. It requires concentration and reflection. These
will return considerable value.

August 2018 Todd R. La Porte,
Professor of the Graduate School and
Professor Emeritus of Political Science
University of California, Berkeley
Acknowledgments
Writing this book was ultimately made possible by a research position at Karls-
ruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). I am grateful to those responsible, in partic-
ular Christian Büscher, Carsten Orwat and Armin Grunwald. I would like to
wholeheartedly thank the supervisors of this dissertation, Matthias Kohring and
Torsten Strulik, for their continuing and expedient advice, which decisively
guided this work. I owe a special thanks to my internal supervisor at the Institute
for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at KIT, Christian
Büscher, whose diverse input has greatly benefitted this book.
I received further valuable inspiration and counsel from Stefan Böschen,
Reinhard Heil, René König, Bettina-Johanna Krings, Todd R. La Porte, Andreas
Lösch, Jens Schippl, and Christoph Schneider. My gratitude is extended to all
of them. I am also thankful for the work of Mira Klemm and Sylke Wintzer,
who have supported me in the copyediting process and with formal require-
ments. In the same regard, special thanks are due to Julie Cook, who has raised
the quality of this book through exceptional proofreading, and also Britta
Göhrisch-Radmacher and Anita Wilke of Springer VS, for their patience and
dedication in the editing process. Moreover, I would like to thank my many other
colleagues at ITAS for providing a vibrant PhD research community.
Neither this work nor the privilege of university education would have been
possible without the support of my parents and grandparents, which is why I
sincerely thank them for their support throughout the years. I dedicate this book
to my grandfather Rudolf Sumpf, whose departure from our lives was much too
early.
Contents
1  Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 
1.1  Motivation and Research Objectives ................................................... 1 
1.2  Theoretical and Empirical Approach ................................................... 6 
1.2.1  Theory ......................................................................................... 6 
1.2.2  Case Study ................................................................................... 8 
1.3  Methodology ...................................................................................... 11 
2  Trust in Systems ....................................................................................... 15 
2.1  The Dualism of System Trust ............................................................ 15 
2.2  Decision-Making and Compulsion .................................................... 20 
2.3  Intersections in Trust Research .......................................................... 25 
2.4  An Architecture of Trust: First Sketch ............................................... 30 
2.5  Reflexivity, Construction, Attribution ............................................... 34 
3  System References .................................................................................... 41 
3.1  Systems as Trustees ........................................................................... 42 
3.2  Systems as Trustors ........................................................................... 46 
3.3  Open and Closed Systems .................................................................. 52 
3.4  System Identity .................................................................................. 57 
4  Conditions and Consequences of Trust in Systems ............................... 69 
4.1  Trust and Control ............................................................................... 70 
4.2  Controlling Complexity ..................................................................... 75 
4.3  Knowledge and Non-Knowledge ....................................................... 81 
4.4  Trust and Risk .................................................................................... 87
X Contents
5  Toward an ‘Architecture of Trust’ ......................................................... 97 
5.1  Trust and Expectations ....................................................................... 98 
5.2  System Communications ................................................................. 106 
5.3  Trust in Technology and Organizations ........................................... 112 
5.4  An AoT for the Energy System ....................................................... 123 
5.5  Collection of Hypotheses ................................................................. 132 
6  Case Study: Trust in the Energy System .............................................. 137 
6.1  Energy System Transformation ....................................................... 137 
6.1.1  Impact and Logic of Smart Grids ............................................ 138 
6.1.2  Consumer Involvement and the Role of Trust ......................... 140 
6.2  Case Study Approach: Overview ..................................................... 144 
6.3  Design and Methodology ................................................................. 146 
6.3.1  Operationalization ................................................................... 149 
6.3.2  Interview Guide ....................................................................... 162 
6.4  Results ............................................................................................. 163 
6.4.1  Initial Remarks and Observations ............................................ 163 
6.4.2  Category I: System Identity ..................................................... 166 
6.4.3  Category II: Expectation Nexus .............................................. 182 
6.4.4  Category III: Reassurance Patterns .......................................... 198 
7  Conclusions ............................................................................................. 219 
7.1  The Reality of System Trust ............................................................ 221 
7.2  System Constitution and Attributions of Trust ................................ 224 
7.3  Outlook: System Trust in Theory and Practice ................................ 229

References ..................................................................................................... 237
Figures
Figure 2-1. Major Components of Trust and Intersections in Trust
Research .................................................................................... 29 
Figure 3-1. Social Systems: Trustee or Trustor? Based on Luhmann
(1995) ........................................................................................ 50 
Figure 4-1. Narratives of Trust and Distrust ................................................ 86 
Figure 6-1. Distribution of Hypotheses to the Categories of System
Identity, Expectation Nexus and Reassurance Patterns ........... 151 
Figure 6-2. Total Numbers and Distribution of AoT Elements .................. 168 
Figure 6-3. Total Classification of System Identity ................................... 175 
Figure 6-4. Personal Expectation Differentiation ....................................... 184 
Figure 6-5. AoT Allocation of Personal Expectations ............................... 185 
Figure 6-6. AoT Allocation of Societal Expectations ................................ 186 
Figure 6-7. Direction of Expectations: AoT Allocation ............................. 188 
Figure 6-8. Experienced or Hypothetical Problems in the Energy Sector .. 200 
Figure 6-9. Four Dimensions of Trust in the Energy System ..................... 210