Refining Archer’s account of Agency and organization

Abstract

Margaret Archer defines Corporate Agency as involving both formulating goals and actively organizing in order to reach them. Primary Agency does not show either of these characteristics. In this article, I further refine this classification according to a typology of agential properties–that is, I create a ‘property space’–based on the two properties of ‘stated aims’ and ‘active co-ordination’, which results in a four-fold table of properties. Specifically, this typology is as follows: Formal Corporate Agency (stated aims and coordinated action); Informal Corporate Agency (no stated aims but coordinated action); Withdrawn Agency (stated aims but no coordinated action); and Primary Agency (no stated aims and no coordinated action). The fruitfulness of the distinction between Formal Corporate Agency and Informal Corporate Agency is demonstrated through an empirical example taken from Sverre Lysgaard’s analysis of the ‘worker collectivity’. I also discuss how my classification of agency advances Archer’s theoretical work in this arena.