Davis, James H., F. David Schoorman, and Lex Donaldson. 1997. “Toward a Stewardship Theory of Management.” The Academy of Management Review 22 (1): 20–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/259223.
Recent thinking about top management has been influenced by alternative models of man. Economic approaches to governance such as agency theory tend to assume some form of homo-economicus, which depict subordinates as individualistic, opportunistic, and self-serving. Alternatively, sociological and psychological approaches to governance such as stewardship theory depict subordinates as collectivists, pro-organizational, and trustworthy. Through this research, we attempt to reconcile the differences between these assumptions by proposing a model based upon the subordinate’s psychological attributes and the organization’s situational characteristics.