There is much rhetoric concerning the need for collaboration and partnership both
from policy makers and those within the sector who see the social enterprise model
as being more collaborative than the private sector. However, there is limited
understanding of the processes by which trust is built up and maintained in these
contexts. The paper examines the relationships between commissioners and
providers, users/beneficiaries/customers (vertical relationships) and relationships
between providers (horizontal relationships). The paper will go beyond
assumptions concerning how organisations are expected to behave, and will
examine the economic and social institutional contexts in which their actions are
embedded. In particular attention will be given to how organisations build
relationships in ‘quasi markets’ and in an environment of emerging competition for
the delivery of public services. These issues are explored by looking at the case of
self-employment support provision in the UK.