Determinants of result-based control in Italian agencies.

Explaining the form of public sector organizations is a major contribution that organizational theory has to offer to the study of the public sector. In this chapter, we investigate the characteristics of the relationships between agencies and their parent administration in the Italian central government. The study, rooted in organizational theory, adopts different theoretical angles, at first a ‘cultural-normative’ approach mainly embedded in a logic of appropriateness perspective (March and Olsen, 1989, 1994, 1996), then an approach focused on instrumental rationality mainly embedded in a logic of consequences perspective (for an overview of different streams in organization theory for the study of the public sector, see Christensen et al., 2007). Governments in many countries have established semi-autonomous single-purpose organizations (OECD, 2002), to which we refer as public agencies, and Italy has been no exception in this respect (Ongaro, 2006 and 2008).