Moving Beyond The Clash of Interests: On stewardship theory and the relationships between central government departments and public agencies

Abstract

This paper analyses the relationships between central government departments and agencies through the lens of stewardship theory. Stewardship theory has been developed as an alternative to agency theory and focuses on shared goals and norms. The paper first shows how current regulations are strongly imbedded in agency theory and then proceed to analyse, on the basis of a survey and focus groups, how the problems experienced by public managers generally point to the relevance of stewardship. On this basis and with input from sixty public managers, a stewardship model for the relationships between agencies and central governments is developed.