| Popis: |
Trust-based management is a popular trend in public sector management. After decades of New Public Management-reforms based on distrust between public sector agents, trust is now rediscovered in a functional perspective as a method of reducing transaction costs and increasing social capital. This thesis explores how trust-based management is implemented as a management concept in the municipality of Copenhagen through a case study of a cluster of day-care and afterschool centres that have been exempted from selected parts of the municipal regulation. Based on Scandinavian institutionalism and on methods of interviews and participant observation the case study analyses how trust-based management is translated in the local context and how this reflects back on the concept. The exemption of regulation aims to reduce bureaucracy and paperwork to make room for professional innovation. However the thesis concludes that this goal is not met. Instead the local actors turn the concept to meet their own needs and so existing agendas is ascribed to the concept. The case study shows a risk of ‘projectification’ of trust. Trust-based management is a very flexible and vague concept and as such it is in high risk of undergoing radical transformation in the local translation. The theory of trust-based management is proclaimed to be in opposition of prevalent top-down management concepts, but as the case study shows, an introduction of trust-related projects is no guarantee of increasing trust nor does it necessarily involve a ‘bottom-up’-perspective. |
