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The article delves into the historical origins and evolution of stewardship from its theological beginnings to its modern applications in environmental and organisational management. It summarises the fragmented conceptualisations of stewardship across various disciplines and proposes a transdisciplinary typology to organise these diverse forms. The typology includes acquired, innate, and normative stewardship archetypes, each with distinct characteristics and applications. The article also explores the relationship between the principal, steward, and resource in these archetypes and discusses the effectiveness of stewardship practices. Additionally, it highlights the challenges and limitations of stewardship initiatives and suggests avenues for future research. By bringing together insights from organisational and environmental management, the article aims to foster a nexus perspective that can contribute to sustainable future practices.
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Abstract
Stewardship is often conceptualised as a governance practice that is beneficial to the resources under management. However, the broad range of stewardship interpretations and practical applications in a variety of fields has led to a complex landscape of both competing and complementary initiatives. Whilst there has been significant discussion over the role of stewardship as an environmental ethic, there has been little attempt to find the synergies and connections between such activities and other establishes implementations—such as the pivotal role it plays in organisational management. In this paper, we conceptualise a transdisciplinary typology through which the landscape of stewardship initiatives can be understood. Additionally, we summarise the history of stewardship to colour the present day context, and explore the meaning of key differences that arise from the proposed archetypes. Specifically, this includes the varying role of the principal and the effect of the prevailing frame of reference. Finally, we also offer recommendations on developing future stewardship research.
1 Introduction
Across a broad range of disciplines, including environmental and organisational management—stewardship acts as embodied practice guided by ethical consideration. However, despite widespread adoption as a direct response to the challenges posed by dominant business-as-usual (BAU) approaches in such fields, conceptualisations of stewardship are fragmented. Knowledge and experience of stewardship in one field currently lacks relevance to application in another.
Recently, the plasticity of stewardship in sustainability science has been addressed by scholars such as Enqvist et al. (2018) in a review that explores stewardship as a boundary object linking dimensions of care, knowledge and agency. Such efforts support the sense-making process for environmental framings, including landscape stewardship (Bieling and Plieninger, 2017), biosphere stewardship (Gordon et al. 2017) and ecosystem stewardship (Chapin et al. 2010).
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However, it is also important to recognise the wider, cross-disciplinary applications of stewardship as a management ethic, such as its role in providing an alternative to the principal-agent relationship in business management. As practitioners continue to integrate stewardship values into various praxes of management, such efforts benefit from a nexus perspective that explores, organises and identifies potential synergies between existing applications.
In order to address the fragmented application of stewardship as a management ethic, and develop the case for a nexus perspective between organisational and environmental fields of study, there are three key objectives of this paper:
1.
Summarise the historical development of stewardship from origin to modern practice
2.
Develop a transdisciplinary typology that organises the various forms stewardship can take
3.
Explore questions raised from the development process
To achieve these objectives, this paper employs an archival research approach to curate and summarise understanding regarding the history of stewardship. This stage includes a brief analysis of trends in modern literature, plus analysis of volume and reach. Literature from each of the identified fields then contributed was then utilised to develop descriptions, a proposed typology and inductive, philosophical conceptualisations of stewardship—as outlined by Meredith (1993).
Finally, in order to move beyond inductive theory building and provide inspiration for future use of the proposed typology—this paper identifies questions raised from the development process, guided by the anomalies in application and categorisation that may provide further insight into the complex nature of stewardship, and pathways to transdisciplinary perspectives.
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Ultimately, the overarching aim of this conceptual exercise is not to provide definitive proof that there is an ontologically correct way of applying an ethic of stewardship. Rather, it is to bring together a nexus of fragmented outlooks on an ethic of management which capable of contributing to a sustainable future that can be used as the foundation for fruitful academic and practitioner discussions.
2 The history of stewardship
The many modern interpretations of stewardship can be traced to a common theological origin in the Hebrew bible—from which it has proliferated and, more recently, gained broad secular popularity. In particular, a steward is presented as the manager of a royal household and subordinate to the king (Beavis 1991). By the first century A.D., the use of stewardship had grown to secularly describe a slave’s position of household authority over other slaves and in, religious contexts, as a metaphor for the responsibility that man has before God (Beavis 1994).
The flexibility of stewardship as a theological construct is most apparent in the Parable of the Shrewd Manager found in Luke. 16:1–13 (English Standard Version Bible, 2001). The controversial verse tells of a manager about to be fired who is seemingly commended for recording debts owed to his master at a lower value than in truth. While the moral implications and intended meaning of the parable are unclear—a common implication is that the steward is rewarded for foregoing commission and placing a greater value on service to his master above all else.
Despite a relative prominence in scripture, stewardship was not widely integrated into theological teachings until the 19th century when the Protestant churches of the New World used the imagery of stewardship to catalyse a tithe-linked system of financial self-support (Hatfield 2016). Through sermon as a method of incidental cultural popularisation, stewardship grew as an informal ethic adopted by policymakers, planners and grassroots organisations (Welchman 2012).
Academic criticism grew alongside informal popularisation—in particular regarding the concern that it represents a patriarchal, colonial and anthropocentric ideology which emphasises the role of ownership (Palmer 1992). However, despite a reflexive unease, the concept became firmly rooted in environmental ethics when adopted as part of United Nations Millenium Declaration, stating in Chapter 4, Paragraph 23: “We resolve therefore to adopt in all our environmental actions a new ethic of conservation and stewardship.” (UN General Assembly 2000).
Thus, put simply, from Judaeo-Christian roots and the interpretation of scripture to enable post-revolutionary war self-sufficiency, stewardship proliferated organically and across diverse fields as a prototypical management strategy, until achieving influence in key intergovernmental organisations (UN General Assembly 2000; WHO, 2016). As this normative influence has expanded, so too has the operationalisation of stewardship.
Today, in the 21st century, stewardship has become key phraseology for environmental non-profits and multi-stakeholder associations. Notable examples include the marine stewardship council (MSC), forest stewardship council (FSC), alliance for water stewardship (AWS), aluminium stewardship initiative, and seafood business for ocean stewardship (SeaBOS). It has also contributed to exponential formal and informal growth in intra-organisation applications. The close relationship between environmental sustainability and stewardship is demonstrated by Fig. 1, which charts the growth in published articles regarding sustainability and stewardship between 2002 and 2022.
Fig. 1
Count of articles published to web of science core index with the terms ‘sustainability’ or ‘stewardship’ in the title, abstract or keywords
However, modern interpretations of stewardship, as highlighted in our introduction, are not unique to environmental and development issues. Examples of stewardship as a management ethic can be found in healthcare institutions, organisational governance, financial sectors and policymaking. Table 1 summarises a cross-section of stewardship applications that have been the subject of academic enquiry in the past two decades—and were influential on the conceptual development of preliminary archetypes presented in this paper.
Table 1
Examples of recent uses and references to the term stewardship in literature from multiple disciplines
Term
Use
References
Antimicrobial stewardship
To collectively describe actions that have the strategic goal of restricting unnecessary antimicrobial usage
Majumder et al. (2020); World Health Organisation (2019)
Environmental stewardship
Especially in the USA, a value or behaviour that leads to improved environmental outcomes
This literature is not evenly distributed either. As Fig. 2 demonstrates, environmental stewardship accounts for a minority of research. The field in which it has been studied most frequently is that of health and medicine. In much of this research, as with the other fields in which it has been applied, specific and niche experiences have altered the practical application of stewardship.
Fig. 2
Categorisation of research articles containing ‘stewardship’ in the title, abstract or keywords published to web of science core index between 2012 and 2022 (minimum threshold of average 10 articles per year in sub-disciplines applied)
Whilst this narrative of stewardship proliferating from a single point of origin to broad adoption may be compelling, it is worth considering that such an interpretation of history is characterised by a narrow surviving literature, primarily originating from the Anglosphere. It has been noted by scholars of various disciplines that comparable beliefs are present in many other, less well-documented, historical contexts, including: the philosophy of Ruism (Tu 1996), the environmental management practices of Indigenous communities (Calicott 1994) and the oral traditions of early nomads (Wu 1998).
Thus, while there may be a clearly documented path of influence from Judeo-Christian theological conceptualisations of stewardship to 21st century application—this should be tempered by the knowledge that such narratives may be biased by a lack of evidence from other cultural histories which may also have played a role.
3 A transdisciplinary typology
A commonality across the diverse literature and domains to which stewardship is applied is the presence of three key actors—the principal, the steward and a tangible or intangible resource (Worrell and Appleby 2000; Contrafatto 2014; Caers et al. 2006). However, it is important to note that divergences in disciplinary application of stewardship arise, in part, from the way in which the role of the principal—in particular—is performed.
1.
Principal: This is the entity on behalf of which stewards act. The values of the principal inform the management approaches employed, and daily activities conducted, by a steward. Depending on the stewardship context, the principal may be an individual, an institution, a psychological construct, or a normative belief.
2.
Steward: The individual or group within the relationship which actively manages the resource on behalf of the principal. A steward typically acts as the linkage between principal and resource, and as a limiting factor on direct interaction.
3.
Resource: A resource is the subject of active management by a steward. While it may be under the ownership of the principal, this is not a defining characteristic. The resource may be tangible or intangible and determines the scale of the stewardship.
Definitions of stewardship within the context of an individual discipline often provide a simple linear framework for understanding the relationship between these entities. Some definitions may also draw boundaries based on the resource. However, in order to build an effective typology for cross-disciplinary understanding, the following set of archetypes places the greatest emphasis on the process of value creation and diffusion through the hierarchical network of actors. When examined through this lens, the following emerges.
1.
Acquired stewardship (AS): a type in which the principal is a clearly defined entity whose management values are adopted, and carried out by, the steward. The principal may be an institution, organisation or individual most commonly with direct or shared legal ownership of the resource. The steward is not involved in the value-setting process. A key example is provided by typical corporate stewardship theory, in which the executive leadership team acquire the management values of the principals—and stewardship is created by an active selection process of managers who will be open to such values.
2.
Innate stewardship (IS): a mode of operation in which the principal is a social construct inseparable from the steward. The principal often takes the form of an intangible entity such as historical ancestry, future generations, ecosystem health or community wellbeing. Values are created and held by each principal-steward, transmitted through societal mechanisms, and affected by a dyadic relationship with the resource under management. While associative values differ depending on the scenario, responsibility, care, and knowledge are common components. A key example is the land stewardship of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation in the management of the Haa’uukimun Tribal Park, which represents an innate relationship between managers and the park land, built on a history of traditional knowledge (Carroll 2014).
3.
Normative stewardship (NS): in which stewards transmit management practices based on a common understanding of normative expectations to other managers. The target of the stewardship in this archetype is the social construct of the status-quo, and not the resource directly under management. Nuclear stockpile stewardship represents the most directly applicable example of this archetype, in which public and diplomatic channels are frequently used by government administrations to signal a relationship (often continuation) of existing norms, whilst policy actions remain unconnected.
A summary of the differentiating factors between the proposed stewardship archetypes is provided in Table 2. This includes a summary of the common core values present in each archetype, in addition to the target that the stewardship relationship aims to affect, plus typical strategies for maximising the benefit of the target.
Table 2
Differentiating dimensions of proposed stewardship archetypes
Archetype
Actors
Core values
Stewardship target
Benefit maximisation
Acquired stewardship (AS)
Principal, steward and resource
Trust and alignment
Resource or resource utility
Direct integration of stewardship values into wider governance strategies
Innate stewardship (IS)
Principal-steward and resource
Care, agency & knowledge
Resource or resource utility
Discrete application of stewardship at domain-oriented leverage points
Normative stewardship (NS)
Principal-steward and resource
Respect and power
Behavioural status quo or change
Relative to the effect of the current or new behavioural norm
The apparent flexibility of the stewardship yields the natural conclusion that these archetypes are neither mutually exclusive, nor all encompassing. Further, the difference in objective and approaches to benefit maximisation complicates comparisons of effectiveness across archetypes. In this context, benefit maximisation relates to the best perceived outcome for the resource under management by the principal—and may incorporate aspects of environmental, financial or social wellbeing. Thus, the pragmatic route forward is to draw transdisciplinary analyses which identify factors contributing to the effective construction and operationalisation of each archetype.
In order to simplify archetypal classification, Fig. 3 provides a visual summary of the relationship between stewardship actors, directions of influence and frames of reference. Here, the frame of reference refers to the domain within which the stewardship program or initiative operates. For example, in antimicrobial stewardship (AMS), this may refer to either a specific hospital setting or the broader context of global antimicrobial resistance (AMR) depending on the scope of the program. In environmental management, the frame of reference may be a specific geographical region, an objective such as the protection of biodiversity or attainment of healthy fishery stocks, or a process such as democratic community participation in management activities.
Fig. 3
Visual representation depicting the direction of influence for the proposed stewardship archetypes
The arrows denote the direction of influence. Additionally, the size of arrows typifies the degree of exerted influence, and the volume represents whether a single or multiple factors are involved at any one time. For instance, in the AS archetype—values are strongly transmitted from the principal to the steward and onwards to the resource under management. Only weak differential influence is transmitted from the steward perspective to affect the decision-making of the principal.
In the case of IS, the frame of reference itself exerts influence on the principal/steward and the resource itself, which transmit influence in a dyadic relationship. An example of this in action is the case of ocean stewardship (Österblom et al. 2017), in which the ocean health as a frame of reference impacts directly on the fishery resources under management, and the decisions of principal/steward managers. However, the close connection between these two parties also means that the resource responds directly to such decisions, and that response has a recursive relationship on future decisions of managers.
The most complex of the archetypes is normative stewardship, in which there is a disconnect between the frame of reference and the resource under management. While the frame of reference influences the principal/steward to make decisions that reflexively affect the frame of reference, the impact on the resource under management is affected only as a secondary effect of the frame of reference as an operating environment.
Similarly, an example can bring this to life. Systems stewardship (Hallsworth 2011) is an approach to public policy developed in the UK that demonstrates the unique relational aspects of NS. In this style of governance, legislation is not developed solely to achieve a directed goal, but to affect the policymaking environment and signal a policy direction that, in turn, influences multiple future decisions and actions. In this way, NS is an archetype in which the environment influences the principal/steward to take actions that shape the environment affecting the resource under management, rather than the resource itself.
By understanding stewardship as a set of relationships, characterised by value-laden influence, between actors and resources—it becomes possible to identify and build initiatives that conform to archetypes, whilst simultaneously identifying outliers or mixed-method stewardships that provide a unique evolution of the concept.
4 Discussion
This discussion focuses on two key points that distinguish the three archetypes (AS, IS and NS): (i) the relationship between the principal and steward, and (ii) the formation of a frame of reference and reveals the applicability of the archetypes using the real-life example of different stewardships. The section further reveals the situations in which the stewardship concept is appropriate and the limitation of these archetypes presented in this paper.
The first point is based on the observation that the principal and the steward are the only combination of roles which can be fulfilled by the same actor. Notably, across all stewardship archetypes, the three roles of principal, steward and resource are inherently fulfilled, whether explicitly expressed or not. However, it is worth questioning whether is there a difference in effectiveness when the roles of steward and principal are fulfilled by the same actor (or in situations where there is no definable principal)? This is of particular relevance to environmental management and the emerging field of sustainability science as many applications and initiatives are based on the practice of IS where such scenarios are particularly common. To explore this question further, it’s worth contrasting well-documented examples of AS and IS from different bodies of literature.
A representative example of AS in practice can be found in the stewardship theory of corporate management. This theory forms the opposite side of a continuum with agency theory as opposing explanations to the principal-agent problem. The principal-agent problem, in early management literature, came to explain the challenges that arose from the separation of power in large companies (Keay 2017). It suggests that the primary challenge of governance is due to the distinction between shareholders as owners of a company (principals) and CEOs or managers as the actors with whom decision-making control rests (agents).
According to the theory, agents are naturally inclined to act in self-interest and not in ways that are aligned to the will of principals (Shapiro 2005). Therefore, solutions to the problem have historically focused on the actions that shareholders can take to regulate potential conflict against their interests as owners. Examples include distributing stocks to agents to create managerial ownership and create shared interests (Jensen and Meckling 1976), increasing the debt level of the firm as a disciplinary tactic (Frierman and Viswanath 1994), and increasing agent monitoring capabilities through external directors (Rosenstein and Wyatt 1990) or blockholders—activist holders of significant, but not controlling, levels of shares or debts (Burkart et al. 1997).
Stewardship theory proposes an alternative behavioural premises for explaining the relationship between corporate shareholders and managers. It explores situations in which managers behave in pro-organisational ways, placing cooperation and the interests of principals above the individualistic motivations (Davis et al. 2018). Therefore, interventions that encourage stewardship behaviours replace disciplinary and control-seeking measures with the search for managers that display pro-organisational tendencies and the deliberate extension of managerial autonomy.
While characterised by the opposing governance strategies of control and trust, recent literature has focused on performance maximisation—experimenting with combinations of stewardship and agency management principals to find synergistic outcomes. For example, based on a test of indicators for both regimes, Schillemans and Bjurstrøm (2020) concluded that the optimal governance approach for Dutch quasi-autonomous public agencies required a combination of agency and stewardship theory elements. This has been supported by similar findings in a range of governance scenarios, including family firms (Löhde et al. 2021), corporate management (Obermann et al. 2020), and higher education (Urbanek 2020).
Thus, in a key AS scenario in which the principal-steward relationship is defined by trust and the roles are fulfilled by separate entities, management practices associated with stewardship do not lead to the greatest outcomes—but must rather be balanced alongside control-based tactics in order to achieve optimal resource benefit maximisation. It is worth contrasting this against the IS archetype common in environmental management and sustainability science.
As described by Enqvist et al. (2018), stewardship behaviours in an environmental or social context are emergent actions formed by knowledge, care, and agency. The dimension of care is characterised as (1) emergent from socio-ecological relations, (2) embodied and practiced, (3) situated and political (West et al. 2018). When contrasted against the nature of AS, this archetype does not distinguish between principal and steward as separate entities. Neither is the role of steward designated by a principal. Instead, the principal is a social construct of the steward, formed through a reciprocal process of social-ecological relationships. This means that AS represents a primarily one-directional transfer of management values, not adapting to the current conditions or feedback of the resource, whilst IS embodies the practices of adaptive management, bound by time, context and feedback systems.
Therefore, the objectives and scales of IS-based ecological stewardship are broad and fragmented—observed on an individual, community and normative scales (Chapin et al. 2022). As such, the effectiveness of stewardship cannot be assessed at a conceptual level but must be evaluated on the merits of initiatives and interventions. Tailored monitoring programs or participatory processes are required to assess impact (Driscoll et al. 2012; Silva and Krasny 2016). However, at a macro level, it remains unclear the extent to which interventions at various leverage points are enhancing stewardship outcomes (Bennett, 2018).
Such statements, and supporting meta-analyses, may lead to the conclusion that IS is in an inherently weaker form of stewardship than AS, and that separation of the principal and steward role is an important factor in achieving maximum benefit for the target resource. However, it is also possible to conclude the opposite, that IS is a much stronger form of stewardship born of deeply held cultural practices and beliefs. While it is currently challenging to conclude on which form may be more resilient, the separation of archetypes that this typology offers provides a route to potential comparative analysis.
The second observation and point for discussion derives from the non-linear manner in which normative stewardship interacts with the frame of reference and resource under management. In AS and IS archetypes, stewardship acts as an intervention against the status quo. However, in certain bodies of literature, an inverse relationship is found, suggesting that the concept can also be applied to the maintenance of existing practices or beliefs. Examples of such normative stewardship (NS) are particularly prevalent in elite policy theory and third-party environmental stewardship councils.
For example, in reviewing stewardship of the nuclear non-proliferation norm, Lantis (2015) describes US presidents as stewards signalling a continuation and protection of the status quo through framing of acceptable behaviour, operationalised through export controls on weapons and technology. This represents a clear departure from AS and IS archetypes, in which the role of the steward is to manage a resource or resource utility. Instead, this application involves maintaining the status quo within a particular domain of reference. A further difference can be found in power structures. Whilst principals occupy a higher position of decision-making and value setting authority than stewards in AS and IS archetype, in NS the power to maintain or break from the status quo rests with the steward.
NGOs such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) present a particularly interesting case—which can be considered both an example of AS and NS alike. According to a basic reading, each council in isolation represents a principal using voluntary certification measures to attract and align stewards to a particular set of management practices. Previous analysis of such initiatives has yielded mixed results.
In particular, the MSC has demonstrated a capacity to create incentives for the responsible management of fish stocks (Gulbrandsen 2009; Kaiser and Edwards-Jones 2006; Ponte 2008), however can also have unintended consequences, such as acting as a barrier to the introduction of protected marine reserves in Australia (Sutton 2003). In comparison to forestry management, the management of shared fish stocks lacks easily observable effects of non-compliance and a more complicated set of assessment consideration (Christian et al. 2013).
While it is possible to draw a connection between the issuing of certifications and an impact on the resource as a direct governance or management activity, if analysed through the lens of normative stewardship, a different perspective emerges. When viewed as NS, the development and growing credibility of such programs contributes to the stewardship of a new norm—one in which natural resources are used responsibly by default. Therefore, it is important to assess the impact of such stewardship councils not only by the influence directly exerted on resources by actors who are certified, but also on wider socio-economic norms.
In this way, the contributions of stewardship councils are not limited to direct impact but shaping a shared narrative, and thus indirect contributions to challenging or supporting the business-as-usual approach—as is indicative of a normative stewardship archetype.
Finally, it is worth consideration as part of the ongoing discussion surrounding stewardship, the extent to which it applicable across the broad range of subjects it is applied to. For example, scientific consensus appears to conclude that AMS (antimicrobial stewardship) programs are effective at reducing antibiotic prescription and consumption rates (Ya et al. 2023).
While these programs employ various approaches, there is a unified goal of preserving future antimicrobial agents, connected to the clearly defined challenge of antimicrobial resistance (Dyar et al. 2017), which can also yield supplemental benefits to other healthcare-related objectives such as patient safety and cost effectiveness (Tamma and Cosgrave, 2011). Thus, while there may still be little counterfactual evidence outside of a business-as-usual mindset, there is a strong case for stewardship—reinforced by logical delineation between stewardship roles and a universally applied archetype.
This stands in stark contrast to the tapestry of stewardship approaches and criticisms that can be found in ecological and environmental management. For example, whilst highlighting the agricultural tradition of Satoyama and the Indigenous lifeways of the Quechua people as examples of Earth stewardship driven by knowledge and co-inhabitance, Rozzi et al. (2015) challenge the foundations of the concept as inherently moralistic, religious, and exclusionary—thus possibly in need of re-framing into a more globally palatable framework for environmental citizenship.
Similarly, seafood and ocean stewardship initiatives can be criticised for the application of stewardship in a potentially limiting manner. For example, a previous analysis of formal objections to marine stewardship council (MSC) certifications concluded the organisation’s definition of sustainable fishing was both too lenient and discretionary, enabling third-party certifiers to interpret standards in a way not congruent with sustainable fishing practices and ultimately mislead consumers (Christian et al. 2013).
Concerns over standards led to diversification among competing certification systems (Bush and Oosterveer 2015; Parks et al., 2010). The compounding effect of competing certifications has led to fragmentation and the ability for actors to choose those which best meet their own interests (Fisher and Lyon, 2014). Ultimately, the heterogeneity of stewardship claims, along with the reduction of stewardship operations to standards certification, can be considered counterproductive to the responsible management agenda (Wijen and Chiroleu-Assouline 2019).
Such tensions are not unique to environmental management and represent a continued ethical limitation on the ecological adoption of stewardship. However, as Beavis (1991) concluded, historic connotations are constraints to work within that limit the applicability of stewardship as a complete environmental ethic, but not as part of the wider praxis.
Based on this limitation, the multiplicity of stewardship strategies and approaches in environmental sciences benefits from multiple scales and subjects, ranging from individual wellbeing to local, regional and planetary targets (Chapin et al. 2010; Steffen et al. 2011). A review by Chapin et al. (2022) notes that in less than a decade, over 1200 initiatives that contribute to an Earth stewardship transition have been put into motion by actors on all institutional and community scales. Through this frame, stewardship exists not only as a direct action, but a collective direction of movement.
This complex praxis landscape, combined with ethical and moralistic spillover, makes the applicability of stewardship to environmental issues much more challenging to evaluate than the single goal-oriented directionality of AMS, or the dualistic positionality of management stewardship theory. Therefore, stewardship initiatives in sustainability science must be rigorously evaluated based on stated objectives and outcomes—rather than in pursuit of a closer adherence to a particular style of management.
5 Conclusions and recommendations
Stewardship, as a conceptualisation of management action, has evolved from niche episcopal roots to occupy a dominant place in a diverse set of domains. This paper aims to contribute to ongoing transdisciplinary conversations about the nature of stewardship and provide an initial set of definitions for further cross-examination. Flexibility, interpretative creativity has association with responsibility as a cultural value have contributed to the increasing popularity of stewardship initiatives and activities. However, it is these same traits which also pose a challenge to the development of a singular, coherent definition.
By offering a typology of archetypes and demonstrating how it can be used to interrogate further questions and narratives, this paper enriches ongoing transdisciplinary discussions. Importantly, we believe that future stewardship research benefits from a nexus perspective, bridging the knowledge sequestered in organisational and environmental management domains, to create outcomes that are better for both fields of study.
Whilst this paper offers a preliminary method of organising the complex and diverse applications of the stewardship ethic, it is also limited by the range of literature that it draws from and its qualitative, conceptual nature. Further, it should be noted that stewardship—the subject of enquiry—is more than a topic of academic study, it is a practised method of management. One that has taken root in the private sector, government, civil society, and local communities alike. Thus, a next logical step is to further test the proposed stewardship formats against real-world applications and, develop.
Specifically, we suggest the following lines of enquiry: a systematic review of management and environmental literature to identify the prevalence of archetypes, alternative conceptualisations of stewardship and common values. We also put forward the need for a guiding set of indicators to measure impact and carve a greater sense of place for stewardship in the wider constellation of management activities.
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Henrik Österblom (The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), Dr. Jan Bebbington (Lancaster University) and Dr. Robert Blasiak (Stockholm University) for useful discussions and support.
Declarations
Conflict of interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
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