Agents are either guided directly by the elicited or communicated preferences of their principals, including both the conditions or states that their principals value and the particular actions the principals prefer that agents use to realize those states (goal priority), or can research clues...

This paper argues that the central function of the board of directors is, and has always been, to provide assurance, and reassurance. The paper introduces a typology of four classes of board functions, legal, normative, descriptive, and utilitarian, and argues that none adequately captures the...

To date, much of the literature on institutional economics has relied on abstract metaphors based in exchange. Thus, Williamson introduced the fundamental insights surrounding his “transaction costs” model and discussed the governance of contracts in exchange relationships. Yet organizations...

This paper introduces the theory of agency, identifies key concepts, relationships, and logics of agency. Norms of agency are identified and discussed, including the fiduciary norm. Problems of agency are identified and discussed. Applications of agency theory are made to regulation, the...

The first scholars to propose, explicitly, that a theory of agency be created, and to actually begin its creation, were Stephen Ross and Barry Mitnick, independently and roughly concurrently. Ross is responsible for the origin of the economic theory of agency, and Mitnick for the institutional...

The paper introduces the concepts of incentive relation and implementation relation, discussing them in the context of agent-principal relationships. The incentives literature relevant to implementation is reviewed, as well as relevant literature on individual behavior in organizations and on...

The study of reputation has often focused on such relatively narrow areas as creation of good reputations rather than developed systematic theoretical approaches to understanding the means by which reputations are modified, or shifted, and the factors affecting such shifts. This paper introduces...

To a very large extent, politics is agency. Indeed, agent-principal relationships pervade public and public-private behavior. This paper reviews the extensive but not yet integrated literature applying agency concepts to political settings. This includes agency in definitions of politics or...

This essay presents a new argument for the societal role of government. Traditionally anchored in the classic Hobbesian rationale, government's classic function has been taken to be the provision of security: Government is provided a monopoly in the rule of force in order to ensure protection...

This paper presented the core part of the then newly-developed theory of agency, which had been independently proposed by Stephen Ross and Barry Mitnick. The paper described a typology of agency relationships based on the nature of the consent between agent and principal, the source of...