Trust, Power, and Organizational Routines: Exploring Government’s Intentional Tactics to Renew Relationships with Nonprofits Serving Historically Marginalized Communities

Abstract

Existing public management practices and organizational routines in the contracting regime have systematically created power asymmetry and distrust between government agencies and nonprofits serving historically marginalized communities. However, little is known about how the government could reform public bureaucracies to renew relationships with these important organizations and build trust. Through a process-oriented inductive study of Minnesota’s 2-Generation Policy Network, we find that government’s cascading trust-building tactics both inside the bureaucracy and with nonprofits serving Black, Latino, Indigenous, and Immigrant/Refugee communities allowed them to create a new collaborative infrastructure that both changed organizational routines and built power to address racial inequities in the existing human service system. Power is not a zero-sum game. By sharing resources and building trust with their nonprofit partners, government agencies and nonprofits collectively access more power for genuine public management reform to address systematic inequities.