From Ambivalence to Stewardship Commitment - Toward a Behavioral Model of Stewardship Governance

The goal of this paper is to explore how stewardship commitment is stimulated from the ambivalent individuals’ motivational intentions through corporate governance practices and structures, drawing on a qualitative meta-analysis. Our findings indicate that stewardship commitment develops from processes of alignment, deliberation, and direction embedded within trust-based and control-based governance structures through practices of directive-, facilitating-, and participation work. We contribute to opening up the ‘black box’ of actual stewardship commitment and offer insights into how and why individuals may serve corporations as stewards by proposing a behavioral model on stewardship governance.