In disembedded global markets information gifts build relationships without prior face-to-face contact

Evidence

Since traders routinely have both systems available, they may choose the Reuters conversational dealing system for relationship deals and EBS for others deals, or they may complement EBS deals with conversations conducted via the Reuters dealing system. When relationships are involved, they act as conduits for the flow of knowledge and information. All relationships in which traders are engaged appear to be information relationships; many also involve trades and personal exchanges. To turn the argument around, gifts of knowledge and information are the means of relationship building when it comes to the disembedded global markets studied. Previous faceto-face contacts, on the other hand, are not necessary for the establishment of dealing relationships that involve familiarity, trust, and the exchange of personal information; in fact, face-to-face contacts often follow, rather than precede, electronically mediated relationships. — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures, 132

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the common assumption that face-to-face contact precedes trust in markets — connects to Granovetter’s embeddedness debate and to ethnographic accounts of ‘disembedded’ screen trading. — connects to: Web 2.0 rhetoric claims business can embody gift-economy values — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 139; Global market interaction produces intersubjectivity beyond face-to-face encounters — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures: The Virtual…, 98; Global impersonal markets rest on personal trust and telephone networks (+3 more)
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to ‘Grafting & Growth’ via the theme of relationships built through non-face-to-face infrastructure — though the tie is loose, the ‘gifts of information as relationship currency’ mechanism parallels exchange-style trust building described there.

Related

• Global market interaction produces intersubjectivity beyond face-to-face encounters (similarity 0.87)
• The trading platform infrastructure itself shapes whether trust relationships emerge (similarity 0.82)
• Global markets are assembled through microsocial patterns of relatedness and coordination (similarity 0.82)
• Global impersonal markets rest on personal trust and telephone networks (similarity 0.80)
• Interbank currency traders form a global social system distinct from local exchange brokerages (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Global markets are assembled through microsocial patterns of relatedness and coordination #expands (0.80) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1086
• Global impersonal markets rest on personal trust and telephone networks #corroborates (0.75)
• Trader sociality persists inside electronic markets and was ethnographically documented #exemplifies (0.75)