Definition of "agency"

agency

/ˈeɪ.d͡ʒən.si/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural agencies
1. The capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.
  Quotations
  A few advances there are in the following papers tending to assert the superintendence and agency of Providence in the natural world.
  1695, John Woodward, “(please specify the page)”, in An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth: And Terrestrial Bodies, Especially Minerals: […], London: […] Ric[hard] Wilkin […]
  Because structure in this argument means institutions— pregiven norms, values, beliefs, and practices— it is open-textured, incomplete, cannot guarantee its own applications, therefore, all behavior is action, has agency (Garfinkel 1964; Strauss et al. 1963).
  2018, Morris Zelditch, Status, Power, and Legitimacy, page 65
2. (sociology, philosophy, psychology) The capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.
  Quotations
  Formally, capitalism performs its fundamental gesture—reappropriation without transformation. This bears on the question of subjective agency because this “reappropriation without transformation” is exactly what agency seeks to avoid; such a process indicates, in fact, that one's agency has failed, that one really had no agency in the first place.
  2001, Todd McGowan, The Feminine "No!", SUNY Press, page 105
  Strictly speaking, at the level of personal agency one could say that power is a condition where one is “enabled.” I would contend that this is a condition of personal agency.
  2012, Edmund V. Sullivan, A Critical Psychology, Springer Science & Business Media, page 75
  The feeling of being in control of one's body should involve the sense of body-ownership, plus an additional sense of agency.
  2013, Andy Clark, Julian Kiverstein, Tillmann Vierkant, Decomposing the Will, Oxford University Press, page 112
3. A medium through which power is exerted or an end is achieved.
4. The office or function of an agent; also, the relationship between a principal and that person's agent.
5. An establishment engaged in doing business for another; also, the place of business or the district of such an agency.
  Quotations
  As an employment agency you have a responsibility to supply work to the individual agency worker, as well as a service to the client.
  2012, Simon Toms, The Impact of the UK Temporary Employment Industry in Assisting Agency Workers since the Year 2000, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, page 277
6. A department or other administrative unit of a government; also, the office or headquarters of, or the district administered by such unit of government.