Building Trust With Trust? A Qualitative, Explorative Study of Implementing a Trust Reform in a Norwegian Municipality

Abstract

What does a more trust-based governance reform look like in practice? This qualitative, exploratory study contributes to a relational view of reform design and implementation. Findings from documents and semi-structured interviews with municipal managers were analyzed using a theoretically developed framework for maintaining and building organizational trust through governance reform. The studied trust reform had an open design, and managers were given high organizational autonomy. The analysis shows that a trust reform paradoxically needs to be built with trust, with a combination of local organizational autonomy, increased clarity in the design specifications from central authorities, and/or organizational support and guidance.