Trust-Based Leadership in the Making: Implementing a Trust Reform through distributed leadership

I spite of the popularity of trust-based leadership in consultancy and popular management writings empirical research on the transformation from traditional top-down to trust-based leadership is still limited. In this paper we study the implementation of a trust-based leadership reform in the City of Copenhagen taking place since 2012. We focus on understanding the trust dynamics in this major transformation. We show that the implementation of trust-based leadership should be seen as an emergent process involving a variety of actors within the organization. The case study reveals that the Trust Reform may be seen as a process involving multiple actors contributing to the implementation in diverse ways. The Trust Reform is a complex and fragile process giving rise to radical changes in roles and competences needed for leaders and for employees at different levels in the organization. The study also indicates that the implementation of a radical management reform involves a complex interplay of trust relations between actors at multiple levels of the organization.