Agency-Structure Theory

Abstract

This article is a small part of the author’s PhD study. While in-depth interviews were conducted, these are not utilized in this paper given the memorandum of agreement signed with the HR Manager of the case study of a government commercial company, namely Post Fiji Limited. Respecting this, this paper is based only on various relevant publicly available archival data of annual reports, business magazines, newspaper articles and staff newsletters. These past data relates much to the episode under investigation which is during the period the first CEO (at that time the title was Managing Director-MD) held office at the subject case study and thereafter. Not only is this entity one of the best performing government commercial companies in Fiji, it is also one of the very few profitable government owned postal operations worldwide. The paper details and analyses the top-management and certain Board member actions, revealed corrupt by an audit. Post the departure of the said MD from the entity, he was alleged to have accepted payments not entitled to. A few other executives were exposed as those engaged in corrupt practices as well. The paper used the theoretical debate between Agency and Structure to give an empirical backing on which of the two holds in a real life institutional setting. The paper concludes that even when all looks well in a good performing government entity from afar, there are gaps for supposed corruption at the highest levels. Nonetheless, hats off to those who conduct the audit and do a good job of revealing all who engage in suspected corrupt practices which may remain undetected in successful entities if otherwise. In terms of Agency versus Structure theoretical arguments, this paper agrees with Cockerham (2005) who elaborates that while agency can allow individuals to reject or modify their lifestyle patterns and to carry out self benefiting activities, structure can cut back and restrict the behaviour options that are available to individuals (Cockerham, 2005). Keywords: Fiji, public enterprise, Post Fiji Limited, corruption, government commercial company, Agency versus Structure Theory

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