This article provides an overview of the literature on nonprofit principal-agent relationships. It depicts the nature of agency theory and stewardship theory, analyzes the origin of their struggle within the nonprofit structure, and marks directions for a conciliatory approach. We open with an introduction to agency theory and discuss the two main components of its mathematical branch. We there...

Global health networks—webs of individuals and organizations linked by a shared concern for a particular condition—have proliferated over the past quarter century. In a recent editorial in this journal, I presented evidence that their effectiveness in addressing four challenges—problem definition, positioning, coalitionbuilding and governance—shapes their ability to influence policy. The editor...

A long-standing debate in the IS literature concerns the relationship between technology and organization. Does technology cause effects in organizations, or is it humans that determine how technology is used? Many socio-theoretic accounts of a middle way between the extremes of technological and social determinism have been suggested: in recent years the more convincing explanations have been ...

The growth in end-user computing (EUC) in organizations and its implications for the degree of centralization of the information services function have led to the need for a theory that will assist in the management of this process. This paper employs microeconomics and, in particular, agency theory to describe the development of EUC in organizations. The results suggest that agency theory prov...

Article history: Received 3 March 2008 Received in revised form 12 May 2009 Accepted 12 May 2009 While the franchising literature has typically relied on agency theory, efficiency considerations may not fully explain decisions to expand through franchising or company ownership. In this study, I re-examine franchising decisions using insights from institutional theory. The key tenet of instituti...

Research on post-migration processes usually focuses either on micro-level behaviours or on macro-level interactions between states and their diasporas. This paper aims to fill a gap by proposing a structure/agency approach likely to address the micro-, mesoand macrolevel factors that account for cross-border phenomena. The first section compares the main structure/agency approaches (Bourdieu’s...

We provide measures of absolute and relative equity agency costs for corporations under different ownership and management structures. Our base case is Jensen and Meckling's (1976) zero agency-cost firm, where the manager is the firm’s sole shareholder. Utilizing a sample of 1,708 small corporations from the FRB/NSSBF database, we find evidence supporting several predictions of agency cost theo...