Fiduciary Norm

The fiduciary norm is a social norm that instructs the agent acting in his or her role of agency to act solely in the interest of his or her principal, without regard for any other interests, including the self-interest of the agent. The more highly dependent the principal on the agent's tasks of agency, the more likely is the norm to be triggered and to be more strongly prescribed.

As described in the following sections, the fiduciary norm requires the agent to make full use of the agent's skills; to expend all necessary effort to serve the principal; to exclude competing interests that could adversely affect the agent's actions for the principal, hence abiding scrupulously by the promise to serve the principal with perfect fidelity; to ...