If people who have to work together in an enterprise trust one another it is because they are all operating to a common set of ethical norms....such a society will be better able to innovate...since the high degree of trust will permit a wide variety of social relationships to emerge.

Economic activity is carried out by individuals in organisations that require a high degree of social co-operation

In the future the optimal form of industrial organization will be neither small companies nor large ones but network structures that share the advantages of both.

It was the slave's continuing desire for recognition that was the motor which propelled history forward, not the idle complacency and unchanging self-identity of the master

The nation will continue to be a central pole of identification, even if more and more nations come to share common economic and political forms of organization.

The desire for economic prosperity is itself not culturally determined but almost universally shared

If networks are to be more efficient...this will come about only on the basis of a high level of trust and the existence of shared norms of ethical behavior between network members