**6. Conclusions**

Our study contributes to the literature on the dynamics of multiparty systems by using a relational, social-network approach to investigate how trust self-enhancement at the onset of inter-organizational relations impacts the evolution of collaboration centrality. Although the pivotal role of trust in collaboration was extensively explored so far, we show that collaboration network centrality displays a certain sequential development as it is only possible to predict centrality indicators from the ones evaluated in the previous time frame. This element is common to the social complex-adaptive systems that display such a sequential dynamic (Cur¸seu 2006). In other words, we show that a particular state of a multiparty system (e.g., collaboration centrality) can be predicted by using the previous state alone and not the more distant states. In order to understand the collaboration outcomes in such systems, one must understand the sequence of events in a comprehensive manner. It is therefore difficult to predict the outcomes of a multiparty system from compositional features or from its initial state alone. One needs to follow and comprehend the sequences of actions and interactions in such systems in order to grasp the complex nature of inter-organizational interactions.

**Author Contributions:** O.C.F., P.L.C. and A.M.F. designed and conducted the study; I.O. analyzed and aggregated the network data, P.L.C., O.C.F. and A.M.F. analyzed the data; O.C.F., A.M.F., P.L.C. and I.O. wrote and revised the paper. These authors contributed equally to this work.

**Funding:** P.L.C. and A.M.F. were supported by a gran<sup>t</sup> of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS—UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P4-ID-ERC-2016-0008. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
