Abstract
While trust within and between organisations is considered a major indicator for successful organisation the debates on reforms of the judicial system overlook the need for internal trust. Drawing on a case study of the Flemish juvenile public prosecutor’s office and juvenile court, this chapter aims to explore the organisational trust phenomenon in a judicial context. The state-of-the-art trust process developed by Dietz (2011) is applied to the judicial case by interviewing core members within the case organisations. Within this judicial context counterpart’s flexibility, loyalty, openness, workload as well as the presence of an ingroup/outgroup culture between the organisations arise as important bases to determine trustworthiness. Trustworthiness was generally valued high but for some tasks ability and benevolence were perceived lower, mainly due to perceived high workload. The willingness to take risks and the actual risk taking behaviour in the form of communication and task-delegation could be lacking for those tasks. However, even then trust was often placed in the trustee because the trustor does not have the resources to take a more controlled risk. These kind of unsure situations should nevertheless be avoided in a cooperation as decisive as the juvenile justice chain. Further research is required to check for generalizability.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Under Belgian law, a minor is a person who has not yet reached the age of 18. Cases within the juvenile justice system are called ‘protectional’ cases because it involves on the one hand cases where the minor finds himself in an unstable home environment and needs to be protected by judicial action, and on the other hand the criminal cases, where the minor who committed the crime is presumed not to have reached a sufficient level of maturity to be held responsible. Juvenile courts may only impose protective and educational measures that are not penal in character (Youth Protection Act, April 8, 1965).
- 2.
The name of the district is withheld due to reasons of confidentiality.
References
Blois, K. J. (1999). Trust in business to business relationships: An evaluation of its status. Journal of Management Studies, 36, 197–215. http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6486.00133
Bouckaert, G. (2012). Trust and public administration. Administration, 60(1), 91–115.
Brewer, M. B. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love and outgroup hate? Journal of Social Issues, 55(3), 429–444.
Castelfranchi, C., & Falcone, R. (2000). Trust and control: A dialectic link. Applied Artificial Intelligence, 14(8), 799–823. http://doi.org/10.1080/08839510050127560
Costa, A. C. (2003). Understanding the nature and the antecedents of trust within work teams. In B. Nooteboom & F. Six (Eds.), The trust process in organizations Empirical studies of the determinants and the process of trust development (pp. 105–124). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
De Bruyn, D. (2006). De magistraat aan het woord. Een verkennend onderzoek naar de opvattingen van magistraten over hun functioneren in justitie en samenleving. Antwerp, Apeldoorn: Maklu.
Depré, R., & Hondeghem, A. (Eds.). (2000). Management, bestuur & beleid in de rechterlijke organisatie. Brugge: die Keure.
Dietz, G. (2011). Going back to the source: Why do people trust each other? Journal of Trust Research, 1(2), 215–222. http://doi.org/10.1080/21515581.2011.603514
Drever, E. (1995). Using Semi-Structured Interviews in Small-Scale Research. A Teacher’s Guide. Edinburgh: SCRE.
Edelenbos, J., & Klijn, E.-H. (2007). Trust in Complex Decision-Making Networks: A Theoretical and Empirical Exploration. Administration & Society, 39, 25–50. http://doi.org/10.1177/0095399706294460
Fulmer, C. A., & Gelfand, M. J. (2012). At what level (and in whom) we trust: Trust across multiple organizational levels. Journal of Management, 38(4), 1167–1230. http://doi.org/10.1177/0149206312439327
Golbeck, J., & Hendler, J. (2006). Inferring binary trust relationships in Web-based social networks. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, 6(4), 497–529. http://doi.org/10.1145/1183463.1183470
Hartley, J. (2004). Case study research. In C. Cassell & G. Symon (Eds.), Essential guide to qualitative methods in organizational research (pp. 323–333). London: SAGE Publications.
Hennink, M., Hutter, I., & Bailey, A. (2010). Qualitative Research Methods. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Koppenjan, J., & Klijn, E.-H. (2004). Managing uncertainties in networks: a network approach to problem solving and decision making. London: Routledge.
Luhmann, N. (1979). Trust and power. Chichester: Wiley.
Lyon, F., Mollering, G., & Saunders, M. N. K. (2012). Handbook of research methods on trust. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Markusen, A. (1999). Fuzzy concepts, scanty evidence, policy distance: The case for rigour and policy relevance in critical regional studies. Regional Studies, 33(9), 869–884. http://doi.org/10.1080/00343409950075506
Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. The Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709–734. http://doi.org/10.2307/258792
McAllister, D. J. (1995). Affect- and cognition based trust as foundations for interpersonal cooperation in organisations. Academy of Management Journal, 38(1), 24–59. http://doi.org/10.2307/256727
McEvily, B., & Tortoriello, M. (2011). Measuring trust in organizational research: Review and recommendations. Journal of Trust Research, 1(1), 23–63. http://doi.org/10.1080/21515581.2011.552424
Reynders, D., Thomaes, S., & Devroe, E. (2005). Het openbaar ministerie in de beleidscyclus: naar een samenwerkingsdynamiek met de dienst voor het Strafrechtelijk beleid. In R. Depré, J. Plessers, & A. Hondeghem (Eds.), Managementhervormingen in Justitie, van internationale ontwikkelingen tot dagelijkse praktijk (pp. 153–183). Brugge: die Keure.
Rousseau, D. M., Sitkin, S. B., Burt, R. S., & Camerer, C. (1998). Introduction to special topic forum: Not so different after all: A cross-discipline view of trust. Academy of Management Review, 23(3), 393–404. http://doi.org/10.2307/259285
Seppänen, R., Blomqvist, K., & Sundqvist, S. (2007). Measuring inter-organizational trust—a critical review of the empirical research in 1990–2003. Industrial Marketing Management, 36(2), 249–265. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2005.09.003
Skinner, D., Dietz, G., & Weibel, A. (2014). The dark side of trust: When trust becomes a “poisoned chalice.” Organization, 21, 206–224. http://doi.org/10.1177/1350508412473866
Vandam, L., Colman, C., Vander Laenen, F., & De Ruyver, B. (2010). Towards an integral and integrated drug policy: Pearls and pitfalls. In M. Cools, B. De Ruyver, M. Easton, L. Pauwels, P. Ponsaers, G. Vande Walle, … G. Vynckier (Eds.), Safety, societal problems and citizens “perceptions”: new empirical data, theories and analyses (Vol. 3, pp. 239–262). Antwerpen: Maklu.
Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank The Belgian Science Policy (Belspo) for organising and funding the interorganisational attraction pole programme ‘Justice & Populations’ within which this project has taken place. The authors also thank Peter Oomsels, Graham Dietz and Barbara Lawrence for their important inputs on earlier versions of the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Callens, M., Bouckaert, G., Parmentier, S. (2016). Intra- and Interorganisational Trust in a Judicial Context: An Exploratory Case Study. In: Hondeghem, A., Rousseaux, X., Schoenaers, F. (eds) Modernisation of the Criminal Justice Chain and the Judicial System. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25802-7_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25802-7_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25800-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25802-7
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)