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.

Citizen trust in regulatory agencies is crucial for the effective functioning of financial markets and broader public governance. This paper investigates the validity of the Citizens' Trust in Government Organizations (CTGO) scale in a transitioning society with historically low institutional trust. Using the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (PFSA) as the focal organization, our study examines how trustworthiness dimensions-ability, integrity, and benevolence-apply in this context. The research combines a quantitative study, which validates the CTGO-scale in a new cultural and institutional setting, with qualitative focus groups that explore citizens' perceptions of PFSA's trustworthiness. Our findings confirm the CTGO-scale's reliability and extend its applicability to low-trust contexts and specific regulatory agencies. However, focus group data suggest that the label for the "benevolence" dimension is best changed to reflect the impartial, commitment to the public good aspects typical of public organizations. We propose replacing benevolence with impartiality in trust measurement tools to better capture the structured, duty-driven nature of public governance. This study advances the conceptualization of trust in regulatory agencies and provides a foundation for future comparative research across diverse governance settings.

The relationship between trust and distrust in public governance is still an open question. In the literature, three different perspectives on how trust and distrust are related are intensively debated: (1) trust and distrust as two ends of the same conceptual continuum; (2) trust and distrust as opposites, but with neutral ground in between; and (3) trust and distrust as related, yet distinct concepts. Employing a new measure for distrust and by using perceptual data on trust and distrust in regulatory agencies from multiple types of stakeholders in nine countries and three sectors, this article shows that high trust and high distrust can co-exist at the same time, and that trust and distrust are negatively correlated only to a limited extent. Moreover, while trustworthiness correlates strongly with trust, trustworthiness does not or only weakly correlate with distrust in a negative way. These findings are robust even when controlling for respondents' characteristics, different types of stakeholders, sectors and countries. This suggests that in public governance settings trust and distrust should be considered as distinct concepts, and the article calls for more research into the distinctiveness of the measurement, causes and effects of distrust, compared to trust.

In this article, we review the distrust literature and explore whether the universal sequence for trust as outlined by Dietz (2011) and Dietz and Den Hartog (2006) is also true for distrust. Compared to trust, there is much less research on distrust, although the field has been rapidly developing in recent years. We argue that it is time to explore a universal sequence for distrust to take stock of current knowledge and to focus the empirical and conceptual research. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that such a universal sequence is a valuable framework for distrust research. This analytical exercise also forces us to identify tacit assumptions that frame and guide much of the current distrust (and trust) research. In so doing, we identify two main areas that require more attention: 1) the definition of distrust and its relation to trust and 2) the universal sequences and their dynamics. These findings lead to avenues for further research.

Governments worldwide are relying on the COVID-19 vaccines as the solution for ending the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting crisis. Although scientific progress in the development of a vaccine has been astonishing, policymakers are facing an extra hurdle as increasingly more people appear to be hesitant in their intention to take such a vaccine. Based on a large Corona survey in Belgium, this study aims to explain the vaccination intention by linking it to trust in government and experts, while accounting for individuals’ risk perceptions and prosocialness.

Linking with the debate around new public management (NPM) and new public governance (NPG), the article studies different conceptual approaches for explaining dynamically changing systems that locally deliver integrated health and social care. To make our case, we analyse three health and social care ecosystems: London in England, Tampere in Finland, and West Lothian in Scotland. We argue (a) that network analysis is suited to NPM striving for efficiency, rather than NPGs seeking service effectiveness and innovation; (b) that classifying service systems as networks or ecosystem has important strategic and management implications; and (c) from examining three self-classified local public service ecosystems, that these distinctions are misunderstood in practice.

We address a conundrum: since ecosystems lack a Central Controller, how are these self-organizing systems led? This is important since local service providers in Europe are adopted ecosystems organizing of services in preference to network management. We show that ecosystems are led not centrally directed by a powerful agent, but instead guided to change by collective consciousness that results from learning in logic-of-practice distributed in the ecosystem. We suggest a new framework for explaining leadership in collaborative governances organizing as ecosystems. This has important implications for how leadership in collaborative governances in local service delivery is viewed.

: Rule compliance (in organizations or society at large) may be strengthened or weakened by social contagion processes. Observing others’ (non-)compliance with rules influences one’s own likelihood of compliance. Extant literature shows two social contagion theories that can explain this phenomenon. First, the theory of normative conduct (TNC) (Cialdini et al. 1990) suggests that people interpret the observed behaviour of others (i.e. the descriptive norm) as adaptive for that context, resulting in rational imitation. Second, Goal Framing Theory (GFT) (Lindenberg and Steg 2007) suggests that we should look not just at the contagion of concrete behaviour but at the process that governs the contagion of the very goal to comply with norms and legitimate rules. This is particularly important because it predicts that observed (non-)compliance regarding one rule also affects (non-)compliance with other rules (‘cross-norm effects’). Because the goal to comply tends to decay, it needs continuous support from the observation of other people’s respect for norms and legitimate rules. Compliance and non-compliance are thus both self-reinforcing mechanisms. This has clear implications for policy which are discussed in this chapter, most notably the importance of a focus on legitimizing rules, so that they are interpreted as norms by the general public.

Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to study which factors drive compliance and how the evolving context in society –virus fluctuations and changing government measures – changes the impact of these factors. Extant literature lists many factors that drive compliance – notably enforcement, trust, legitimacy. Most of these studies, however, do not look across time: whether a changing context for citizens changes the impact of factors driving compliance. In this study, we use Lindenberg's Goal Framing Theory to explain the dynamics of these drivers of compliance during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We formulate hypotheses for pro‐socialness, trust in government, observed respect for rules, rule effectiveness, rule appropriateness, fear of COVID‐19 (severity and proximity), opportunities for pleasure and happiness, as well as worsened income position. We test our hypotheses with data collected at three different moments during the beginning of the COVID‐19 crisis in Flanders, Belgium. Findings show that over time the constellations of factors that drive compliance change and, later in the pandemic, more distinct groups of citizens with different motivations to comply are identified. The overall conclusion is that the voluntary basis for compliance becomes more fragile over time, with a more differentiated pattern of drivers of compliance emerging. Public policy and communication need to adapt to these changes over time and address different groups of citizens.

Education systems support teachers to be or become effective when teachers are willing and able to do what is needed to be effective. Willingness relates to teachers' motivation. This chapter focuses on motivation by addressing the question: how can schools and education systems motivate teachers to be(come) effective? Currently, in many countries, educational accountability systems are experienced as being dominated by distrust of teachers and schools, suggesting a negative relationship between trust and accountability, sometimes even leading to worse outcomes. This, however, is not inevitable. This chapter argues that schools and education systems can motivate teachers to be(come) effective when accountability and trust reinforce each other, creating a work context that supports teachers' basic psychological needs. The different perspectives on the relationship between trust and accountability are first addressed and then self-determination theory (SDT) in introduced as the theoretical basis for understanding when the relationship is positive or negative. SDT is a motivation theory and can be applied to trust-based accountability regimes in the mesosystem (i.e. school) and the regulatory dimension of the exosystem. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how this contributes to the quest that is central to this book.

The paper challenges the network management perspective of Kooiman (2003) and Klijn and Koppenjan (2014) arguing that complexity in local public service governance now means they are better approached as ecosystems than networks, which are centrally managed. Instead, we note Duit and Galaz's (2008) idea of flexible governances and, using a reformulated version of Lipsky's (1980) street-level, synthesize Laclau's (1990) idea of governance-as-legitimacy with Vygotsky's (1934) social learning approach and Six's (2005) trust theory to suggest a new analytical framework. We use the framework to analyse logic-of-practice in services-as-a-system (pulled, personal services).

This chapter focuses on trust in public professionals and their profession. It presents the results from a semi-systematic literature review and finds that there are two patterns for how the relationship between professionals and their employers and regulators has evolved over the past decades. The first pattern is the relationship between public professionals and their managers, employers and regulators is seen as an adversarial struggle: it is professional autonomy versus managerial control. The second pattern is more collaborative pattern; people see practices emerging where professional autonomy is felt to be present together with increased managerial control. Empirical research into trust relations between professional workers and their manager, employer and regulators is scattered across many different academic fields and, as a consequence, across many publication outlets. Public professions are trusted to organize their own professional controls in order to safeguard their unique expert knowledge and their commitment to public service and societal values.

In this concluding chapter we formulate a research agenda for trust in regulatory regimes, based on the insights gained from the chapters in this edited volume. This agenda follows the five themes identified in the introductory chapter: 1) there are outstanding issues for most trust relations within regulatory regimes that need further research; 2) the interactional dynamics between the different trust relationships within regulatory regimes need more systematic research; 3) the dynamics of processes of trust building and repair within regulatory relationships are understudied; 4) there are still unresolved conceptual issues around trust and related concepts that need further study; and 5) the field is ready to move to more theory building and hypothesis testing research.

Do organizational controls facilitate or hinder employees’ trust in their organization? We addressed this question through a mixed‐methods design using three studies. Based on a literature review and an open‐response survey study (Study 1), we developed a theoretical model proposing that organizational control is positively related to employees’ trust in their organization, and that this relationship is mediated by procedural fairness and organizational prestige. This mediated model was tested and supported in a quantitative survey of 582 European managers and professional employees from a range of organizations (Study 2). A complementary, qualitative interview‐based study (Study 3) confirmed that well‐implemented controls facilitate trust in the organization; however, poorly implemented control systems that are inconsistent, overly rigid, or incentivize untrustworthy behavior can undermine trust in the organization. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Street-level bureaucrats do their work in different contexts and these contexts pose different control challenges. This study distinguishes two context variables: complexity and ambiguity. When ambiguity and complexity are simultaneously high, managers face a double control challenge - achieving both the expertise to address high complexity and the alignment to overcome high ambiguity. Traditional control mechanisms, enforcement, incentives or competence control, fall short. Using evidence from a wide cross-section of street-level tasks (42 cases), this study provides support for the claim that the double control challenge in contexts of simultaneously high complexity and high ambiguity is important in street-level bureaucracies and that it is difficult to devise a response. Usually one of the challenges is simply ignored. Where a response to both control challenges is devised simultaneously, tensions occur because some of the mechanisms conflict with each other. We found very few organisations that have found appropriate solutions.

Regulatee motivations are central to rule compliance. Extant regulation theories acknowledge that regulatees harbour multiple motivations, but lack explanations how these different motivations relate to one another and how they frame decision-making. This study empirically explored what contribution Lindenberg’s Goal Framing Theory (GFT; e.g. 2000) may make to solving this puzzle. GFT distinguished three master motivations (hedonic, gain and normative) and proposed that the strongest motivation present framed the way regulatees make decisions, while other motivations, in the background, (de)stabilized the dominant motivation. It also proposed explanations for the impact of contextual influences – regulator, professional and personal networks - on different motivational constellations. Using a qualitative case study design, a saturation sample of Dutch food entrepreneurs was interviewed to reconstruct their motivational constellations and the impact of contextual influences on their constellations over time. Our findings showed that Lindenberg’s typology applied to regulatory situations and that GFT helped to explain the observed dynamics of motivations and their constellations. It also helped to explain the impact of contextual influences. We suggest an agenda for further research.