The relationship between trust and management control: field research at the Dutch healthcare organization Troy and Troy

Abstract

This thesis explores the control and trust practices within an intrafirm healthcare organization. Previous research often neglects the role of trust in intrafirm and hierarchical relationships, while trust is often found to be important in interfirm relationships. In this thesis the interfirm control and trust framework of Vosselman and Van der Meer-Kooistra (2009) and a modified overview of formal and informal control mechanisms derived from Dekker (2004) is used to explore the control and trust practices in an intrafirm setting. The data was collected primarily through semi-structured interviews with multiple members of the organization. An analysis of the data revealed that multiple types of trust play an important role in the intrafirm organization and are found to have different functions, such as ex-ante trust as a requirement in the application procedure, thick trust as a path for individuals to grow in the organization and thick trust building in an environment of fundamental uncertainty through relational signals. Lastly, this thesis proposes a change to the original framework of Vosselman and Van der Meer-Kooistra (2009) by adding ex-ante trust in benevolence, integrity, and ability as a variable effecting the production of thin trust.