Resilient Capacity Sharing under Disruptions: Integrating Trust, Reciprocity, and Intelligent Decision-Making Models

Abstract

Capacity sharing among autonomous yet interdependent entities constitutes a foundational mechanism for managing demand volatility and resource scarcity across supply chains, cloud computing platforms, energy grids, and humanitarian logistics. When facing disruptive events, ranging from natural disasters to cyberattacks and geopolitical shocks, the capacity-sharing systems that underpin these infrastructures are pushed far beyond their design envelopes. This paper develops a comprehensive system-level analysis of resilient capacity sharing under disruptions, arguing that robustness and adaptive recovery cannot be achieved by technical optimization alone. Instead, they demand the systematic integration of three pillars: trust, reciprocity, and intelligent decision-making models. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives spanning operations management, multi-agent systems, organizational theory, and resilience engineering, the paper examines how trust and reciprocity reshape the incentive landscape for resource pooling, how intelligent algorithms can learn dynamic allocation policies in high-uncertainty environments, and how the governance architecture of capacity-sharing networks must balance central coordination with decentralized autonomy. The analysis foregrounds structural trade-offs among efficiency, fairness, transparency, and adaptability, and discusses the socio-technical implications of embedding algorithmic decision-making into shared infrastructure. Policy considerations regarding accountability, algorithmic auditing, and polycentric governance are elaborated to ensure that resilient capacity sharing remains both operationally effective and normatively legitimate. The paper concludes by identifying pathways for future research that fuse behavioral models of inter-organizational cooperation with self-adapting computational mechanisms, thereby contributing to a more holistic framework for critical resource exchange under stress.