Nazli Mohammad

Yvonne Stedham

Relationship between Cultural Values, Sense of Community and Trust and the Effect of Trust in Workplace

Keywords: Social trust, trust, dimensions of trust, measurement, social cohesion, trust in the workplace, cultural differences

This paper provides a general overview of different perspectives and studies on trust, offers a definition of trust and provides factors that play a substantial role in developing social trust, and shows from which perspectives it can be fostered. The results showed that trust is playing an important role in success for organizations involved in cross-national strategic partnerships. Trust can reduce transaction costs, promotes inter-organizational relationships, and improve subordinate relationships between managers.

Introduction and Background

The positive effects of social trust have been substantiated in several studies. Studies at the aggregate level-across nations or sub-national units-show that societies inhabited by more trustful citizens, experience higher levels of economic growth [START_REF] Bjørnskov | Social trust and the growth of schooling[END_REF]Knack and Keefer 1997), more effective democratic government (Knack 2002;[START_REF] Tavits | Making democracy work more? Exploring the linkage between social capital and government performance[END_REF], and less dishonest behavior [START_REF] Neville | Do economic equality and generalized trust inhibit academic dishonesty? Evidence from state-level search-engine queries[END_REF]. In short: social trust promotes desirable collective outcomes.

Increasingly, researchers from a variety of business disciplines are finding that trust can lower transaction costs, facilitate inter-organizational relationships, and enhance manager subordinate relationships. [START_REF] Fukuyama | Social capital and the global economy[END_REF]. At the same time, we see a growing trend toward globalization in establishing alliances, managing, and hiring employees, and entering new markets. So, there is a need to view the concept of trust from the perspective of national culture.

Scholars in various disciplines have considered the causes, nature, and effects of trust. In this research, prior approaches to studying trust are considered, including the role of culture, the relation between belonging with a community and trust, and social characteristics. (Mayer and Davis, 1995) In this article, we address cultural factors that may have a direct effect on the level of trust in society. A definition of trust and key determinants of trust and outcomes are presented. The purpose of this article is to illuminate the key role of trust in critical social processes. Besides, given the importance of the behavioral consequences of trust, propositions for the relationship between trust and ethical judgment will be developed. Specific questions to be addressed are:

1. What is "trust"? What role does "culture" play? How trust is established depends upon the societal norms and values that guide people's behavior and beliefs. Identifying factors influencing the development of trust.

2. What are the importance and benefits of trust in the emerging global and multicultural workplace? How does trust develop and in what ways does national culture impact the trustbuilding process? Exploring these questions is important for the following reasons:

Trust is critical to companies' and societies' success. Social relations are necessary to meet needs. When we learn more about trust across different cultures, more successful would be the interactions between people from different cultures. We know to which cultural norms and values facilitate or inhibit the formation of trust. Also, it helps in facilitating trust-building capacities between people. In short, knowing the differences in culture between the two societies can help avoid costly problems and failure. (Pitta, D. A., Fung, H. G., & Isberg, S. 1999).

Trust enables people to take risks: "where there is trust there is the feeling that others will not take advantage of me" [START_REF] Porter | Behaviour in Organizations[END_REF]. Trust is based on the expectation that one will find what is expected rather than what is feared [START_REF] Deutsch | The resolution of conflict: constructive and destructive processes[END_REF]. Thus, competence and responsibility are central to an understanding of trust [START_REF] Barber | The logic and limits of trust[END_REF][START_REF] Cook | New work attitude measures trust, organizational commitment, and personal need nonfulfillment[END_REF]Shapiro, 1990). Finally, trust encompasses not only people's beliefs about others but also their willingness to use that knowledge as the basis for action [START_REF] Luhmann | Trust and power[END_REF]. Combining these ideas yields a definition of interpersonal trust as the extent to which a person is confident in and willing to act based on, the words, actions, and decisions of another. [START_REF] Mcallister | Affect-and Cognition-Based Trust as Foundations for Interpersonal Cooperation in Organizations[END_REF].

1-Determinants and Correlates of Trust

The following section presents findings related to determinants and correlates of trust from the World Values Survey (WVS).

Society's level of economic development is closely linked with its level of interpersonal trust. Trust shapes economic development rates as well as the reverse. Studies show that rich societies have a much higher level of trust than poor ones.

In low-income countries, those with more education and those with postmaterialist values are only slightly higher on interpersonal trust than those with little or no education or those with materialist values. The 15 richest societies in the 1990 World Value Survey show that the more educated and the postmaterialists are much more likely to feel that most people can be trusted than are the less educated. So, within the low-income societies, the highly educated are only slightly higher on interpersonal trust, while among the 15 advanced industrial societies, the highly educated show a much higher level of interpersonal trust. Education does not seem to drive the process.

In addition, greater economic inequality means less trust [START_REF] Rothstein | All for all: Equality, corruption, and social trust[END_REF]Jordahl 2007) Wilkinson states with less inequality and more racial/ethnic homogeneity have higher levels of trust. Then it is clear that economic inequalities weaken our civic life as a society. They are also less likely to have been materially successful.

Economic factors seem to play a major role in the emergence of interpersonal trust. But the result of this analysis suggests that a given society's religious heritage may be fully as important as its level of economic development in shaping interpersonal trust. Interpersonal trust shows remarkably strong linkage with the religious tradition of the given society and these religions were established long before the industrial development of these societies. The cross-national difference also reflects society's cultural heritage. Protestant and Confucian-influenced societies consistently show a higher level of Interpersonal trust than do historically Roman Catholic or Islamic societies. Also, the World Value Survey data reveal a strong positive correlation between interpersonal trust and the functioning of democratic institutions. Interpersonal trust is strongly linked with democratic institutions, as well as economic development. One possible explanation of this configuration would be that economic development gives rise to democracy, which produces relatively high levels of Interpersonal trust. On the other hand, the results suggest that less hierarchical political institutions promote trust. (Martin Ljunge, 2014) Politics, religion, family, education, and economics are functional for society. Therefore, another important factor is considered social cohesion as levels of order and stability putting together by shared norms and values in society [START_REF] Parsons | Social System[END_REF]. These enable individuals to identify and contribute to common goals and share moral and behavioral norms that function as a base for interpersonal relationships. Larsen defines cohesion as the belief that citizens have in a given nation that shares a moral compass, which in turn provides a common ground for trust [START_REF] Larsen | The rise and fall of social cohesion: The construction and de-construction of social trust in the US[END_REF]. It is then defined and measured by the number of individuals trusting each other to some degree (national identification and belief).

A cohesive society works towards the well-being of all its members, fights exclusion and marginalization, creates a sense of belonging, promotes trust. (OECD 2011). Characteristics of social cohesion are (1) reciprocal loyalty and solidarity, (2) strength of social relations and shared values, (3) sense of belonging, (4) trust among individuals of society (the community), and (5) reduction of inequalities and exclusion.

Budman relates group cohesion with individuals' perceptions of outcome in the group and defines three metrics to quantify social cohesion: (1) individuals acting together towards a common goal, (2) positive engagement around common goals, and (3) a vulnerable and trusting attitude that fosters the sharing of private materials (Budman et al. 1987;[START_REF] Fuhriman | Group psychotherapy: Research and practice[END_REF]).

On the other hand, heterogeneity is detrimental to social cohesion. Larsen made a pertinent argument about globalized multiculturalism and how it might go against the idea of similarity of mind and the shared values required to establish trust (and cohesion to a bigger extent) [START_REF] Larsen | The rise and fall of social cohesion: The construction and de-construction of social trust in the US[END_REF]. He defended that heterogeneity of society, and all its diversity goes against social cohesion because a cohesive society shares a moral compass (ground for trust). This implies that there cannot be generalized trust among different clusters of individuals with different cultures and values. More diverse areas show lower levels of trust in their neighbors. Putnam's study, which used a large, nationally representative sample of nearly 30,000 Americans, found that people living in more diverse areas reported lower levels of trust in their neighbors. In other words, greater diversity seemed to be linked to both feelings and behaviors that threaten a sense of community (Landmark, 2016). when it comes to distrust and diversity, most of the distrust is expressed by Whites who feel uncomfortable living amongst racial minorities. In other words, greater distrust may stem from prejudice rather than from diversity in itself (Grewal, 2016). Therefore, Putnam's conclusion that racial diversity leads to less altruism and cooperation amongst neighbors was incorrect. If there is a downside to diversity, it has less to do with the behavior of racial minorities and more to do with how Whites feel when living amongst non-Whites. Therefore, it may be the instability of diverse communities, rather than diversity itself, that erodes trust. People from different cultures might trust people with different emotional expressions that generate trust. On the other hand, common race and sex had little effect on sharing or inferred trust (Matrinovich, 2017). This finding suggests that emotional expression may play a more powerful role in resource sharing than even race or sex, said Tsai, director of Stanford's Culture and Emotion Lab.

Much of the research on the explicit relationship between culture and trust, employs the Hofstede (1980) cultural Framework. The concept of cultural dimension is a specific aspect of a culture that can be measured relative to other cultures (Hofstede). Six such cultural dimensions (CDs) have been identified: power distance (from small to large), collectivism versus individualism, femininity versus masculinity, uncertainty avoidance (from weak to strong), long-term versus short-term orientation, and indulgence versus restraint. These dimensions operate together, and their operation is influenced by political and economic circumstances and by individual personality factors. The conceptual domain Clark labels "relation to self" encompasses issues of personality and self-concept (1990). Two of Hofstede's (1984) dimensions deal with relation to self. First, individualism/collectivism refers to the relationship between the individual and the collectivity. Norms and values associated with individualism/collectivism reflect the way people interact, such as the importance of unilateral versus group goals, the strength of interpersonal ties and trust, respect for individual accomplishment, and tolerance of individual opinion. Second, masculinity/femininity concerns the dominant values in society (Singh, 1990). The masculinity/ femininity dimension assesses the degree to which "tough" values, such as assertiveness, success, and competition, prevail over "tender" values, such as nurturance, service, and solidarity. (Patricia M. Doney, Joseph P. Cannon, and Michael R. [START_REF] Doney | Understanding the Influence of National Culture on the Development of Trust[END_REF] In relating the cultural dimensions to trust, it has been helpful to consider the scientific literature that describes five distinct cognitive patterns that can be employed by the trustor when forming such expectations: calculative, capability, prediction, intentionality, and transference. These cognitive patterns are called cognitive trust-building processes (CTBPs).

The best device for creating trust is to establish and support trustworthiness. Factors of perceived trustworthiness are Ability, Benevolence, and Integrity. Both ability and integrity belong to the cognitive dimension of trust. Benevolence, on the other hand, belongs to the affective dimension. Benevolence is the extent to which a person believes that other parties will do well to him or her, aside from egocentric profit motive (Mayer et al., 1995).

2-Community

Based on existing research, cohesion in a community positively affects trust. Social cohesion refers to the extent of connectedness and solidarity among groups in society that enhances trust. In contrast, therefore, social isolation would be associated with less trust. Social isolation is a complex issue linked to physical, emotional, and psychological well-being, and influenced by personal, community, societal factors. Social isolation impacts the overall quality of life and has also been linked to depression, anxiety, social stigma, dementia, and increased risk of cognitive decline Sense of community.

Low-income people and seniors are among the most vulnerable to social isolation. Poverty and low income have both been found to increase the risk of loneliness and social isolation (Hortulanus, R., Machielse, A., & Meeuwesen, L., 2006). Certain characteristics place people, particularly older adults, at greater risk of becoming socially isolated including having a low income; living alone; poor health; not having children or contact with family; and lack of access to transportation. Seniors are at greater risk of becoming lonely and socially isolated, largely due to factors that compound to limit social contacts, such as declining income, mobility issues, and the death of friends and family.

Not only senior people are at risk of social isolation, but also young people are prone to loneliness. The uncertain political situation, the lack of leadership in the country, a high incidence of child abuse, rape, sexual abuse, incest, and violence are the factors that increase loneliness among young people (Lch doman; A le Roux, 2010).

Other factors that cause and contribute to loneliness are mentioned in the following: Personality: anxiety, an inability to assert oneself and hypersensitivity, poor self-concept, shyness are other aspects of the personality that contribute to loneliness. Additional characteristics are common among lonely people: isolated people are generally suspicious, imaginative, radical, self-sufficient, tense, and dominating. They are also more emotionally mature, inclined to feel guilty, and less sociable than others (Lch doman; A le Roux, 2010). Depression: people with poor social skills are more inclined to become depressed and yet depression is inclined to loneliness. A lack of feelings of belonging, support, and intimacy caused by poor communication promotes loneliness. Social estrangement and separation and rejection also contribute to loneliness (Lch doman; A le Roux, 2010).

Marital status: Married people usually feel less lonely. Life changes include the abandonment of the parental home, a new occupation, the separation of loved ones, the termination of an important relationship, and relocation increase loneliness (Lch doman; A le Roux, 2010).

Problems in relationships: A lack of feelings of belonging, support, and intimacy caused by poor communication promote loneliness. Social estrangement and separation and rejection also contribute to loneliness (Lch doman; A le Roux, 2010).

Illness or physical disability: this may lead to limited contact with other people. Research indicates that HIV/AIDS and eating disorders isolate sufferers from social contact (Lch doman; A le Roux, 2010).

Religious faith: it correlates negatively with loneliness. However, religions with strict behavioral prescriptions are likely to isolate individuals from free social interaction. This could result in loneliness (Lch doman; A le Roux, 2010).

Academic achievement: Research indicates that students whose academic performance is poor are more likely to be lonely (Lch doman; A le Roux, 2010).

Living alone, advancing of age, gender, level of education, place of residence, visual and hearing impairments, widowhood, co-morbid illness, and depression have been found highly significantly associated with loneliness in older adults in previous studies [START_REF] Beutel | Loneliness in the general population: prevalence, determinants, and relations to mental health[END_REF][START_REF] Savikko | Predictors and subjective causes of loneliness in an aged population[END_REF][START_REF] Wenger | Social isolation and loneliness in old age: review and model refinement[END_REF][START_REF] Hellström | Quality of life and symptoms among older people living at home[END_REF][START_REF] De Jong-Gierveld | Cross-national comparisons of social isolation and loneliness: introduction and overview[END_REF][START_REF] Grenade | Social isolation and loneliness among older people: issues and future challenges in the community and residential settings[END_REF].

3-Build a Culture of Trust in the workplace

Trust allows humans to form communities, cooperate and even, at times, find solutions beyond plain self-interest. Trust affects how we form relationships with our family and friends, and why and how we develop business relationships or decide to buy products in the marketplace (Cook et al., 2009;[START_REF] Sztompka | Trust, distrust, and the paradox of democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Zucker | Production of trust: Institutional sources of economic structure[END_REF]. Indeed, trust can help to alleviate the uncertainty that is often felt in a complex environment, and as such, "one should expect trust to be increasingly in demand as a means of enduring the complexity of the future which technology will generate" (Luhmann, 1979, p. 16).

The importance of trust has been cited in organizational studies areas as communication [START_REF] Giffin | The contribution of studies of source credibility to a theory of interpersonal trust in the communication process[END_REF], leadership [START_REF] Atwater | The relative importance of situational and individual variables in predicting leader behavior: The surprising impact of subordinate trust[END_REF], management by objectives [START_REF] Scott | The causal relationship between trust and the assessed value of management by objectives[END_REF]), negotiation (Bazerman, 1994), game theory (Milgram & Roberts, 1992), performance appraisal [START_REF] Cummings | Performance-evaluation systems in the context of individual trust and commitment[END_REF]), labor-management relations (Taylor, 1989), and implementation of self-managed work teams (Lawler, 1992). Working together often involves interdependence, and people must therefore depend on others in various ways to accomplish their personal and organizational goals (Roger C. Mayer, James H., Davis, and F. David Schoorman, 1995). PWC's 2016 Global CEO Survey revealed that 50% of CEOs worldwide consider a lack of trust to be a major threat to their organizational growth. Paul J Zak has invested decades researching the neurological connection between trust, leadership, and organizational performance. Zak discovered that "compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, and 40% less burnout. "He also found a direct link between oxytocin levels and empathy which is essential for creating trust-based relationships and trust-based organizations. The higher the oxytocin, the higher the empathy. The higher the empathy, the deeper the connection. Zak's research found that this level of vulnerability increases trust and cooperation in others because it stimulates oxytocin production.

The importance and benefits of trust, and the emerging global and multicultural workplace, highlight the need for us to understand how trust develops and the ways national culture impacts the trust-building process. Although trust may form in a variety of ways, whether and how trust is established depending upon the societal norms and values that guide people's behavior and beliefs (e.g., [START_REF] Hofstede | Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values[END_REF].

Since each culture's "collective programming" results in different norms and values, the processes trustors use to decide whether and whom to trust may be heavily dependent upon a society's culture. Indeed, one of the greatest impacts of culture is on how information is used to make decisions [START_REF] Triandis | The analysis of subjective culture[END_REF].

Conclusion

The concept of trust is playing an increasing role in success for the organizations that become involved in cross-national strategic partnerships. So, understanding the relationship between culture and trust is necessary. Trust can reduce transaction costs, promote inter-organizational relationships, and improve subordinate relationships between managers. Series of research propositions demonstrate how societal norms and values influence the application of the trustbuilding processes. Finally, individual personality and organizational culture surely affect trust forming.


Henri Eberspächer
email: henri.eberspacher@pucpr.br

Michelle Joab
email: michelle.joab@lirmm.fr

An Intelligent Web-Based Learning System for Group Collaboration Using Contracts

Keywords: Intelligent Web-based learning, Role-based collaboration, Contract

In this paper we introduce an Intelligent Web-Based Learning System Virtus which supports role-based collaboration using a group contract model (a charter) based on roles and rules. The originality of our work consists, on the one hand, in proposing a declarative language to express contracts using declarative rules, commitments and role responsibilities and, on the other hand, in automatically executing the contract thanks to a knowledge-based system.

Introduction

Web-based platforms devoted to e -learning usually provide a virtual learning environment which supports learning activities. These platforms are used within a variety of methods ranging from classroom education to partially or completely online distance education and from individual to collaborative work. They offer a wide range of tools to support one-to-one or group learning: communication tools, course management tools, content management tools and collaborative work tools .

In this paper we present a software component named VirtusCharte as a part of an e-learning platform that will support group work using a contract by automating the execution of the rules of the contract. Once the contract is defined for a group, it is translated into an executable rule language and periodically, the Virtus platform [START_REF] Eberspächer | Virtus: group support using role-based collaboration[END_REF], resulting from our work, extracts information from the learning environment and activates a knowledge-based system for each active group in the virtual learning environment in order to ensure that the conditions described in the contract are followed.

-Virtus platform

The Virtus platform consists of two modules: VirtusWeb which manages the services of the learning environment (like usual Learning Management Systems) and VirtusCharte which implements an Intelligent Support System to support groups using the rules of the contract during collaborative work. This means that the Virtus platform supplies a regulation and monitoring mechanism [START_REF] Mezura-Godoy | Towards Social Regulation in Computer-Supported Collaborative Work[END_REF] for group activities based on concepts of contract and role [START_REF] Ferraris | Constructing collaborative pedagogical situations in classrooms: a scenario and role based approach[END_REF]. This mechanism is fully configurable through the rules expressed in the proposed contract language using freely defined roles. VirtusCharte is based primarily on an intelligent tool that will automatically support collaborative work using VirtusWeb, the LMS part of the Virtus platform. So, VirtusCharte contributes to the field of Intelligent Web-based learning.

Our proposal is based on the relation between rules and roles . Rules mean a guideline, a formula that indicates what needs to be done within a certain context . Roles mean that each person is identified with a role, so that he/she can quickly identify his/her participation, prerogatives and commitments. We use the term "role" in accordance with [START_REF] Zhu | Role Mechanisms in Collaborative Systems[END_REF]: a role is a set of requirements that define how a member should behave in a group. The rules are based on the concepts of the learning environment: resources, activities, events and roles.

The contract declarative language is able to describe how to monitor the status of an activity and the actions carried out on an activity (such as postponing an activity deadline). Using the rules, the author of the contract expresses, for example, how to react in cases where there is a procedure that is non-compliant with the behavior expected for the role. The assigned user's roles indicate the responsibilities and expected actions of each group member. The rules could question the work carried out by other roles or those that are performed outside the specified time constraints. Using the contract, the users will benefit from an automatic group management support mechanism. From the point of view of a human user, VirtusCharte may act as a virtual user on VirtusWeb working environment and could also recall the users' commitments by sending notifications. These actions and/or notifications are a consequence of the group contract execution.

A learning environment running on Virtus platform is made by a set of services in a given context. The context is structured on three levels: (i) the individual (private user space), (ii) the group (all group members space), and (iii) the community (whole community space). Everyone has his own private space and can participate in public spaces structured in groups within communities. An object always exists in a context and it is always handled in functional spaces categorized in services. Currently, Virtus provides three types of services: (i) activity management, (ii) event management, and (iii) resource management. All functionalities take into account the three contexts (a user could participate in several groups and communities playing different roles).

As a result, we have, on the one hand, VirtusWeb an environment where activities, events and resources are created, viewed and edited, and on the other hand, VirtusCharte, a system that interacts with these objects, applying the terms of the contract. VirtusCharte must be able to consult, edit and modify them using the contract in a specific context. By separating the two software modules of the platform, we aim to run the contract mechanism independently of a particular platform. This means that VirtusCharte could, with some adaptations, be plugged in another LMS. This will be effectively applied in the system's design and in the prototype implementation.

For the development of VirtusWeb, we used free software that is commonly used in open-source LMS systems, the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.VirtusCharte has been implemented in Java and uses the same classes as VirtusWeb with regard to the model of the system. We used JESS [START_REF] Friedman-Hill | JESS in action[END_REF], a Java Expert System Shell to build the knowledge-based system used in VirtusCharte.

For each execution of the knowledge-based system in a private, community or group context , VirtusCharte built the initial facts recovering them with a selective loading algorithm importing them from the VirtusWeb database. Once it has loaded the required information, it c reates its own lists of objects and deals with this information to state the necessary facts to start the expert system.

At the end of the knowledge-based system inference cycle, VirtusCharte consults the working memory (which was changed by the rules) to find the facts which indicate actions to be undertaken on the Virtus platform and notifications to be sent. The actions undertaken by the methods of VirtusCharte are performed using web services in a session where VirtusCharte becomes a user of VirtusWeb.

Conclusion and further work

The originality of our work consists in proposing a declarative language to express contracts using declarative rules, commitments and role responsibilities and in automatically executing the contract using a tailored knowledge-based system.

In the medium term, the goal is to achieve an adaptive environment in the sense that VirtusCharte will run a contract originally adopted by a group and monitor how the effective behavior of groups complies with the terms of the contract when performing a learning activity. If a discrepancy is found between the contract prescribed and the actual conduct of the group, VirtusCharte could propose changes to the contract in order to be more in line with the group behavior [START_REF] Kildare | An online tool for learning collaboration and learning while collaborating[END_REF]. The contract is then re-negotiated and revised by the group members.