Intra- and Interorganisational Trust in a Judicial Context: An Exploratory Case Study

Abstract

While trust within and between organisations is considered a major indicator for successful organisation the debates on reforms of the judicial system overlook the need for internal trust. Drawing on a case study of the Flemish juvenile public prosecutor’s office and juvenile court, this chapter aims to explore the organisational trust phenomenon in a judicial context. The state-of-the-art trust process developed by Dietz (2011) is applied to the judicial case by interviewing core members within the case organisations. Within this judicial context counterpart’s flexibility, loyalty, openness, workload as well as the presence of an ingroup/outgroup culture between the organisations arise as important bases to determine trustworthiness. Trustworthiness was generally valued high but for some tasks ability and benevolence were perceived lower, mainly due to perceived high workload. The willingness to take risks and the actual risk taking behaviour in the form of communication and task-delegation could be lacking for those tasks. However, even then trust was often placed in the trustee because the trustor does not have the resources to take a more controlled risk. These kind of unsure situations should nevertheless be avoided in a cooperation as decisive as the juvenile justice chain. Further research is required to check for generalizability.