Trust reforms in Scandinavia: assessments of adoption and impacts of trust-based mangement in public sector organizations

Abstract

The Nordic countries are high-trust societies and are active public management reformers. During the last decade, the three Scandinavian countries have seen a wave of trust reforms. To many, this seems like a paradox that high-trust countries adopt trust reforms aimed at increasing trust even more. This chapter describes the ongoing trust reforms in the Scandinavian countries not as introducing a new form of management due to low trust but as attempts to rebalance elements from traditional public administration, new public management, and new public governance to better fit each other as well as the contexts of high-trust societies, precisely because these high-trust countries have been active reformers. Trust is a positively laden concept, but also trust reforms may be contested. Using trust reform in the City of Oslo as a case, this chapter explores factors that may explain divergent views on the adoption as well as the impacts of trust-based management.