Agency-Structure Debate

Conceptual Overview

While varying in their view of what the terms agency or structure refer to, most discussants within this debate share a number of fundamental ontological and epistemological presuppositions. Essentially, they ascertain the existence of prelinguistic or presemiotic entities that constitute objective structural properties. In this sense, a manager, a firm, or an industry would exist prior to and independent of its (re)presentation in language. As a consequence, the very process, whereby a manager is constituted in reference to socially prevalent images and role expectations and vis-à-vis (images of) other managers, is largely ignored. Further, participants within this debate also presume that structure and agency entertain causal relationships. This implies that both structure and agency are distinctive and irreducible properties; that is, they exist independently of each other with one—more or less mechanically—affecting the other in any concrete instance. Hence, an organization would affect its environment (or inversely) rather than both mutually constituting and influencing each other. Finally, discussants identify agency in terms of sovereignty. Thus, while being bound to technology, financial restrictions, or temporal pressure, a manager rationally and intentionally exercises choice within these constraints. Notwithstanding these commonalities, the debate concerns not only the extent to which structure and agency are ontologically or analytically distinctive; debated is also the precise quality of their relationship and the ultimate locus of agency, with structures preceding agency or vice versa.

In organization studies, the dualism of structure and agency commonly translates into the distinction between an organizational entity and its environment. Even though the level of analysis may vary, this entity—be it an individual, a firm, or an industry—is said to act vis-à-vis, or in relation to, its respective environment. At its most extreme, agency here renders voluntaristic; that is, an organization features as an agglomerate of actors freely and autonomously choosing their intended conduct. Neoclassical economics, as well as rational choice theory, leans toward this end of the conceptual spectrum. Alternatively, functionalist, structuralist, or evolutionary approaches more or less deterministically conceptualize organizations as following an invariable logic or as responding to inexorable imperatives. Hence, needs for adaptation, functional differentiation, or life cycles ultimately tend to annihilate freedom of agency. More specifically, depending on the frame of reference, one may further distinguish between environmental determinism and action determinism. While the former relates to exogenous causes (e.g., market composition), the latter designate endogenous forces (e.g., qualities of the individual agent) that structure the ability of agents to exercise choice.

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