In large and complex human groups, social rules reduce individuals' uncertainty about their own choice set, including through these rules' simultaneous influence on the choice set of other individuals. But uncertainty varies as to the extent to which it is knowable and quantifiable ex ante. Therefore, different classes of social rules deal with the future uncertainty of individuals' conduct in structurally distinct ways, with institutions and norms being the hallmark example of this distinction. Institutions, through their costly definition and enforcement by a known organization, require specific delineation of behavior and penalties ex ante, meaning they of necessity confront “known unknowns” (risk), or the conduct of members of an organization that can be predicted ex ante. Norms, in contrast, are only effective in shaping behavior if sufficiently shared within a community, which means their application is automatic in expectation to an individual ordering their conduct considering potential norms. This makes norms apply to ex ante known and unknown situations alike, relative to the precision that the articulation of institutions requires with respect to human behavior. Although digital governance carries the benefits (and costs) of considerable institutional “completeness,” governance by protocol is nonetheless incomplete in the face of the complex set of exogenous shocks and human actions that a given digital networked organization will experience. This means digital institutions need to mimic the adaptability of institutions more generally, through the institutional mechanisms of flexibility detailed in this analysis. More generally, though, the fact that norms can serve as a complementary gap‐filler in contexts where institutions do not reach suggest that digital organization designers cannot avoid simultaneous consideration of the human community of network users that will define the norms that become crucial in periods of true uncertainty for any organization.

中文翻译：

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规范、机构和不确定性的数字面纱——网络协议是否需要信任？


在庞大而复杂的人类群体中，社会规则减少了个体对自己选择集的不确定性，包括通过这些规则同时影响其他个体的选择集。但不确定性取决于事前可知和可量化的程度。因此，不同类别的社会规则以结构上不同的方式处理个人行为的未来不确定性，制度和规范是这种区别的标志性例子。机构通过已知组织昂贵的定义和执行，需要事前对行为和惩罚进行具体描述，这意味着它们必须面对“已知的未知数”（风险），或者可以事前预测的组织成员的行为。相比之下，只有在社区内充分共享的情况下，规范才能有效地塑造行为，这意味着规范的应用是自动的，预期个人会考虑潜在的规范来命令自己的行为。这使得规范同样适用于事前已知和未知的情况，相对于制度阐明对人类行为所要求的精确性。尽管数字治理带来了相当大的制度“完整性”的好处（和成本），但面对给定的数字网络组织将经历的一系列复杂的外源冲击和人类行为，协议治理仍然是不完整的。这意味着数字机构需要通过本分析中详述的灵活性制度机制来更广泛地模仿机构的适应性。 不过，更一般地说，在机构无法达到的环境中，规范可以作为补充性的空白填充物，这一事实表明，数字组织设计者无法避免同时考虑网络用户的人类社区，这将定义在各个时期变得至关重要的规范。对于任何组织来说都存在真正的不确定性。