The oxymoron of control in an era of globalisation

Abstract

In response to developments around as well as within organisations, managers are faced with a control-commitment dilemma. A new rationality of governance has emerged besides the well-known rationality of bureaucratic control. This new set of governance strategies, which is presented under different labels such as commitment-based management or trust-based governance, is directed at access to and leverage of intangible resources like employee commitment, tacit knowledge and learning behaviours. In this special issue, six studies are presented that address the subject of how top management teams deal with this control-commitment dilemma and the intended or unintended consequences of choices made. IntroductionThe focus of this special issue is on managerial control strategies, the managerial beliefs on which these strategies are based and the effects of these strategies on the functioning of organisations. Top managers have to deal with fast changing demands posed on the organisation by external parties, market conditions and societal developments, which often create cross-pressures that are not easy to deal with in a straightforward mode. The strategies employed to deal with these conditions also affect the internal governance structure and the effectiveness of internal relations between actors. A central issue of strategic choice is the problem of control. While top managers often believe that centralised decision-making and command and control strategies are the best way to secure high performance, especially in times of turbulence and instances of organisational crisis (Cameron et al., 1987;Mishra, 1996;Pfeffer, 1978), they also experience that control is harder to gain than ever before. Market predictability has decreased, customer demands regarding quality and cost efficiency have risen, and competition has become increasingly intensive and global in character. As a consequence, competitive advantage is increasingly dependent on alliances with other firms and on intangible, potentially high mobile resources, like consumer trust, employee commitment and innovative capacities, which are hard to manage by command and control strategies.In response to these developments, a new rationality of governance has emerged besides the well-known rationality of bureaucratic control. A new set of governance strategies, directed at access to and leverage of intangible resources like employee commitment, tacit knowledge and learning behaviours, promises to be more effective in promoting organisational flexibility and innovativeness. Different terms are used to denominate the new rationality, such as organic regime (Burns and Stalker, 1961), commitment-based management (Walton and Hackman, 1986), trust-based governance (Powell, 1996), clan control (Ouchi, 1979), value-based control (Eisenhardt, 1985 and social control (Das and Teng, 1998). It can be expected that given this new paradigm of

Relationship between management philosophy and clinical outcomes

“…Although this finding seems contrary to what is expected in a highly professionalized environment such as health care, several studies have found relationships between control and quality to the extent that control leads to standardized processes that ensure consistent quality in some settings (Bijisma-Frankema & Koopman, 2004). As such, this finding may have been the result of perceived consistency in patient care from a management system that strictly enforces procedures for care.…”

Corporate conflict management on social media brand fan pages

“…Other streams of literature have also identified pacifying as a conflict management strategy, referring to bureaucratic control mechanisms (Bijlsma-Frankema & Koopman, 2004), distributive (Munduate & Dorado, 1998) obliging (Rahim, 2002) and forcing (Blake & Mouton, 1964) conflict management. Some scholars, however,…”

Understanding the Trust-Control Nexus

“…20 No. 3 forms, produce problems that are typical, unintended consequences of characteristics of the mode of governance itself (Bijlsma-Frankema and Koopman, 2004). Contrary to the vast literature on the negative aspects of formal bureaucratic control (Vroom, 1980), systematic data gathering on the negative aspects of trust-based governance has been scant until now.…”