Principals and agents or principals and stewards?: Performance management of agencies in Norwegian state administration

This thesis explores the performance management of government agencies in Norway using agency theory and stewardship theory answering i) How do ministry-agency steering practices vary, and to what extent do organizational characteristics explain varying ministry-agency steering practices? And ii) How do different performance management practices affect ministerial control of agencies and interagency coordination? Empirically, the research questions are answered using inter alia content analysis of letters of appropriation between ministries and agencies. This thesis establishes a typology of steering practices, and analyses the effect of organizational characteristics on such practices. The thesis also shows how ministerial steering practices, influence the impact of performance management in the steering of agencies, and that public organization’s ability to coordinate depends on their level of policy autonomy, which is defined by ministry-agency steering practice, thereby filling a knowledge gap on how different levels of agency autonomy affect coordination amongst government agencies