Beyond the birdcage: building trust in different regulatory contexts

In response to neoliberal management practices, governance reforms are emerging that explicitly aim to build vertical trust with frontline employees. Through a comparative case study of two municipal trust reforms in differently regulated service areas, this study explores how efforts to build trust are influenced by the regulatory context. The results show that while highly regulated organizations face constraints in removing or redesigning institutional structures, they can still strengthen institutional trust by reinterpreting existing frameworks and introducing new ones. However, success of these reforms depends crucially on addressing both the institutional and interactional aspects of trust simultaneously.