The Visibility of Trust: Exploring the connection between trust and interaction in a Dutch collaborative governance boardroom

Abstract

In multi-stakeholder collaboration settings, trust plays a significant role. We explore the connection between trust and interaction over time in a collaborative governance board. To this end, we conducted a case study of the board of a collaborative governance arrangement in professional education. The results include an increase in trust within the board as well as three changes in the interaction pattern during board meetings: more openness, more responsiveness and more speed. It is argued that the increase in trust and the changes in interaction are related, implying that trust is visible in interaction content, interaction atmosphere and interaction process.

Key words:

• Collaborative governance
• collaboration
• trust
• interaction
• boardroom

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Fontys University of Applied Sciences for providing the financial resources for this research project. In addition, we are grateful to the board members of Campus Connect for their willingness to participate in this research project, for their time and for their cooperative attitude. Also, we thank Yolanda te Poel, Art Dewulf and Jos Bijman for their comments on an early draft of this paper.