Building trust by making sense of crises: an ethnographic study of hospital management in post-pandemic times

Trust is essential for human and organisational existence. While trust might be one of the most
foundational elements of human living and organisational functioning, trust building might at the
same time be one of the most challenging and conflictual processes to go through. It is often said
that trust is hard to maintain and impossible to regain. Managing crises often relies on high levels of
trust, but when crises turn into scandals, trust turn into distrust. Recently, the healthcare sector has
experienced much turmoil and turbulence, hence managing crises, scandals and reputation while
building trust have become part and parcel of leading a public hospital. Using organizational
ethnography, semi-structured interviews and documents, this study applies a process perspective on
trust-building by utilizing sensemaking theory, showing how top managers attempt to build
institutional and interpersonal trust through collective and individual sensemaking practices. The
study finds that through sensemaking of past events of scandal and crisis, interpersonal trust was
built, which then resulted in a new narrative focused on building institutional trust and thereby
strategically attempting to change the organisational reputation. The study contributes to trust
research by deepening insights on dynamics of trust-building, and further contributes to public
management literature by showing how public managers can play a role in building institutional and
interpersonal trust.