ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book focuses on a reappraisal of the theme of trust in market exchanges, aimed at showing the relevance of Max Weber's and Georg Simmel's contributions for an updated research on this subject. It draws alternative ideal–typical formulations–that is, opposing models–of intercorporate relations, as well as suggestions of the consequences, in terms of competitive advantages, for firms and market resulting from the approximation of a national economy to one model or to the other. The book aims at reconstructing ideal types of production organizations, and hence, intercorporate relations promoting the favorable combination of different kinds of trust; and finally, whether it prevails or not on a different combination, to show its consequences as regards its survival and achievement possibilities within the global market. Economic sociology has argued and emphasized the importance of trust in market transactions since Weber's and Simmel's works.
