Introduction

Looking around the literature, it may be realized that there is not just one agency theory. After Bandura (1986), we shall refer to three classes of agency: (1) mercantile agency, (2) emergent interactive agency, and (3) autonomous agency:

The Mercantile Agency is an internal instrumentality through which external influences operate mechanistically on action. Internal agency events are a reflection of the impact of external environments from which causal attributes are ignored, and the self-system is simply a repository and conduit for environmental forces. This type of agency is consistent, for example, with contractual theory (Eisenhardt, 2000) and economic theory (Spence, 1975), where the agency operates through self-interest and bounded rationality, embraces risk and outcome uncertainty, and agency hierarchies exist that correspond more or less to behaviour-based contracts. This is in contrast to the markets that agencies operate in, which correspond to outcome-based contracts.

The Emergent Interactive Agency defines Bandura's (1986) view of agencies. Agencies are emergent and interactive, and apply perspectives of social cognition, making causal contributions to their own motivations and actions using ‘reciprocal causation.’ This adopts attributes of self-regulation, control, action, cognition, affect, and other personal, environmental and interactive factors. Yoon (2011) notes that this agency has the capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of its life, and in doing so operates with the core features of intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness and self-reflectiveness.

The Autonomous Agency is able to embrace the concepts of both the mercantile agency and the emergent interactive agency. An autonomous agency is self-directed, operating in, and being influenced by, interactive environments. It may additionally have its own immanent dynamics that impact on the way it interacts. It is also proactive, self-organizing and self-regulating, participative in creating its own behaviour, and contributes to its life circumstances through cognitive and cultural functionality.

This book is concerned with autonomous agencies which here are broadly structured social living systems that learn and have consciousness. Such agencies are here defined using a meta-theory constituted as a substructure constructed through a generic system hierarchy. The substructure houses superstructure, composed of testable propositions that conceptually enrich substructure, and which may be migrated from other commensurable theories. The substructure also has various dynamic properties that include autonomy, a capacity to learn, and a potential for viability and hence adaptability.