Trusting in the change of new public management

Möllering (2013) sets forth a framework based on five process views of trusting labelled trusting as (1) continuing, (2) processing, (3) learning, (4) becoming, and (5) constituting. His framework has been interpreted as five distinct perspectives that can also be seen as separate scholarly traditions. The purpose of this chapter is to contribute by unfolding the understanding of the five perspectives as a layered, or at least partly layered, model. This layered understanding may explain major obstacles in change processes that involve changing of trust relationships. By investigating a Danish free municipality trial in a job centre transforming from a New Public Management paradigm towards a New Public Governance paradigm, is the chapter explores how the different stages of trusting as set forth in Möllering’s framework build upon each other. The chapter also explores how obstacles in the trusting at lower stages might impose great difficulties in reaching good results in trusting at higher stages in the model. The empirical study is based on semi-structured, qualitative interviews of the managerial hierarchy and two employees at the job centre, as well as written documents such as political addresses, selected governmental documents communicating the legal framework, and other types of official documents stating the understanding of identity, development of processing tools and so on. These different kinds of empirical data are analysed in a hermeneutic process in order to understand not only the dynamics of trusting and social learning of new types of trust relationships, but also the intertwined process of controlling as part of trusting as a learning process.