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.