Antecedents of Governmental Control over Quasi-governmental Organizations in South Korea

Abstract

Governmental control over quasi-governmental organizations is essential in a democratic regime, but it causes monitoring costs for the government and bonding costs for quasigovernmental organizations. It is therefore important to clarify what drives governmental control and to determine how to minimize it. By extending the principal-agent theory to public organizations, this study identified the antecedents of governmental control and verified their impacts on this control empirically using the database of South Korea's public institutions (gonggong gigwan). The results demonstrated that goal conflict, task difficulty, public funding, and public attention made governmental control more stringent. It can be concluded that establishing congruent goals, sharing task information, and improving financial independence are necessary to minimize governmental control.