Business partnership functions as normative rules constraining opportunistic behaviour

Evidence

To sum up, partnership entails a long-term commitment and reflects a condition of mutual dependency where both client and subcontractor are in a position to influence the other by their behaviour. Partnership is a set of normative rules, determining what behaviour is permissible and what constitutes a violation of trust. The rules are designed to facilitate exchange in a situation otherwise open to exploitation. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2604

Categorization

• XREF: Definition of partnership as trust rules maps to the reader’s Luhmann analytic frame, where formal rules substitute for direct observability.