 Trust matters: the governance of private and public services organisations’ external relationshipsReinhard Bachmann Chapter 5 in Handbook on Trust in Public Governance, 2025, pp 76-84 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: This chapter focuses on the external relationships of private and public sector organisations and puts trust in the focus of a comparative analysis. It starts with identifying the function of trust and suggests that it is a governance mechanism that ensures cooperation and coordination of expectations in social interactions. Trust is then examined in more detail with regard to how it can fulfil this task, and it is compared to functionally equivalent social mechanisms for governing organisations’ external relationships, such as power and the market principle. Furthermore, this chapter looks at the key actors and their mutual relationships in the private sector and in the context of public service organisations. Thus, the overarching goal is to elucidate what is known about trust in inter-organisational relationships in the private sector and apply it to the relationship between public sector organisations and citizens. It will be argued that accountability plays a central part in how these relationships can be governed and that the latter can only release its full potential when complemented by trust. Keywords: Trust; Accountability; Governance; Inter-organisational relationships (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:20954_5 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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