Exploring the Role of Administrational Trust and 30th EGOS colloquium, 2014 Distrust in the Flemish Public Administration Draft: please do not cite without author’s permission 1 Exploring the role of administrational trust and distrust in the Flemish public administration. Full paper submitted to 30 th EGOS colloquium, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 3-5 July 2014. Sub-theme 2: Organizational trust across contexts: Towards more context-sensitive research. Peter Oomsels KU Leuven Public Governance Institute Peter.oomsels@soc.kuleuven.be Geert Bouckaert KU Leuven Public Governance Institute Geert.bouckaert@soc.kuleuven.be - Draft: please do not cite without author’s permission - Abstract Our objective in this paper is to explore the roles played by interorganisational trust and distrust in the empirical reality of Flemish public administration on the basis of interviews with senior civil servants in the Flemish administration. We construct a conceptual framework and use it to structure qualitative interviews according to four distinct narratives regarding the roles of administrational trust and distrust. Our conclusion is that both administrational trust and distrust have functional and dysfunctional aspects because both can be considered to lead to positive and negative consequences, both are used in different ways in interactions, and both exist under different contexts. Interorganisational trust and distrust can be functional under some circumstances, but are bound to have dysfunctional side effects if either is used as a panacea in public administration. Public managers should therefore focus on maximising the potential of both administrational trust and distrust to play a functional role, rather than focus on maximising administrational trust as such. Keywords: public administration; interorganisational trust and distrust, dysfunctional trust, functional distrust