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A Process Model During the last five years, American businesses have increasingly accepted the notion that product quality is necessary for them to compete in today′s world markets. Product quality, in the context here, can be defined by an agreed set of standards and tolerance limits between the firm and its customers. Quality is achieved through the successful creation of form, possession, time, place, and quantity utilities for the firm′s products. Control must be implemented in order to ensure that these utilities are created to meet the standards and tolerance limits agreed upon by the firm and its customers. The purpose of exercising control is to ensure that desired results are attained from an activity or process. As such, it is important to exercise control over the logistics activities to make sure that time, place, and quantity utilities are created in accordance with customer needs. The purpose of this monograph is to present a rather comprehensive discussion of the concept of control. Specific control concepts presented include a discussion of the link between control and quality, the development of the characteristics of control and levels of sophistication of control, the presentation of an eclectic process control model, and suggestions to managers on how to implement the control process over logistics activities.

This paper aims to analyse the extent to which health and safety action controls, results controls and informal controls affect the integration of health and safety issues into management actions, which in turn leads to improve health and safety performance. It also investigates the extent to which those health and safety control mechanisms contribute complementarily to the integration of health and safety issues.

A survey of 108 Italian non-listed firms tests a set of hypotheses based on complementarity theory and object of control framework.

Not all the health and safety control mechanisms positively influence the integration of health and safety issues into business practices and external stakeholder relations. Complementarity between health and safety control mechanisms is significant only for higher health and safety performance companies, indicating that the health and safety control mechanisms operate as a package.

The health and safety performance measure could be replaced in future research by improved inter-subjectively testable information, although collecting health and safety quantitative data is difficult. An additional limitation is the response rate.

The findings encourage companies to design and use a comprehensive set of health and safety control mechanisms to promote a healthy workplace.

The paper contributes to the management control, sustainability management control and health and safety accounting literature. The paper provides an in-depth interdisciplinary analysis of the effectiveness of different control mechanisms in the context of health and safety that hitherto has rarely been investigated despite the multiple importance of the topic.

The purpose of this paper is to theorize on the mechanisms underlying the development of entrepreneurial expertise. While prior studies have identified differences between the behavior of novice and expert entrepreneurs, the mechanisms that cause these differences have not received sufficient attention.

This paper systematically reviews the extant literature on entrepreneurial expertise and builds the conceptual framework by employing an action-control belief framework to propose mechanisms underlying the development of expert behavior.

This paper argues that differences in behavior between novice and expert entrepreneurs stem from self-perceptions of their ability to act. More specifically, stronger action-control beliefs encourage entrepreneurs to create new interpretations of the world over time; develop and use strategies that allow them to rely on perceived control over means and ends, their perceived capacity, and their agency; and hence behave more like experts.

This paper suggests that strategy, capacity, and control beliefs are key in individuals’ decisions of whether to engage in entrepreneurial action and that expert entrepreneurs hold stronger beliefs than novices. Positive experiences, particularly those associated with deliberate practice, contribute to developing these beliefs and, more broadly, to entrepreneurial expertise.

This paper proposes that the mechanism of transformation from novice to expert behavior can be attributed to positive changes in deeply held beliefs about strategy (i.e. possible means-ends frameworks), capacity (i.e. access to means), and control (i.e. perceived efficacy). Each of the beliefs can develop separately from others and at different pace. In other words, this work explains why novice and expert entrepreneurs behave differently.

This study examines the association between management control systems (MCSs), specifically the interactive and diagnostic use of controls, with the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure-action portrayal gap (i.e. the disparity in employees’ perception of their organisation’s emphasis on CSR disclosures relative to CSR actions) and the subsequent impact on employees’ perceptions of organisational performance, both operational performance and corporate social performance. Data were collected using a survey of US lower-level managers, with the data obtained from 209 respondents and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results reveal that the interactive and diagnostic use of controls both exhibit a significant negative association with the CSR disclosure-action portrayal gap, that is, the use of these controls reduces the gap. In addition, the various dimensions of the CSR disclosure-action portrayal gap exhibit a significant negative association with both operational and corporate social performance, that is, lower gap, higher performance. The study contributes to the CSR literature by providing the first empirical insight into employees’ perception of both CSR disclosures and actions, and hence, the CSR disclosure-action portrayal gap. In addition, the study contributes to the MCS and organisational performance literature by providing the initial empirical insight into the role of MCSs in mitigating the gap through enhancing the interactive and diagnostic use of controls, and the negative association between the gap and employees’ perceptions of organisational performance.

Organizations are reorganizing into collaborative subunits or teams in order to generate innovative ideas and stay ahead of the competition. Traditional control systems were established to direct employees and prevent control problems, such as fraud or theft, and were designed for vertically managed systems where managers and supervisors made decisions and their subordinates performed tasks. As companies evolve into a team-based structure, decisions are made at lower levels. Restructuring for teams makes information more available and decisions more transparent. Traditional controls no longer apply and can be detrimental to empowerment and the generation of innovative ideas. With increased empowerment there will be a need for different controls and maybe even more control. Innovation can thrive when collaboration takes place and collaboration can occur best when teams are empowered. This chapter presents three separate domains – models of empowerment and innovation, decision-influencing and decision-facilitating information, and management control systems – and illustrates how they interact in a holistic way to either enhance innovative culture or inhibit the generation of ideas.

This chapter examines employee learning behavior as a function of work characteristics. Karasek’s Demand-Control (DC) model proposes that high job demands and high job control are conducive to employee learning behavior. A review of 18 studies revealed that whereas most of these supported these predictions, methodological and conceptual shortcomings necessitate further study. Perhaps the most important weakness of the DC-based research on learning is that the conceptual foundations of the DC model regarding employee learning behavior are quite rudimentary, while the role of interpersonal differences in the learning process is largely neglected. The second part of this chapter explores the relationship between work characteristics and learning behavior from the perspective of German Action Theory (AT). AT explicitly discusses how work characteristics affect learning behavior and assigns a role to interpersonal differences. We conclude by presenting a model that integrates action-theoretical insights on learning with DC-based empirical results.

Action research (AR), which emphasises collaboration between researchers and practitioners, is a qualitative research method that has much potential for the information systems (IS) field. AR studies of IS phenomena are now beginning to be published in the IS research literature. However, the rigour of many AR studies in IS can be improved. When AR has been published, the findings have frequently been emphasised at the expense of the process. In this article, we look at the process in AR projects, and look at some of the key choices and alternatives in controlling AR. We discuss three aspects of control: the procedures for initiating an AR project, those for determining authority within the project, and the degree of formalisation. We analyse seven recent AR projects in IS and from this analysis distil recommendations for determining these control structures.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the construction of social and environmental strategies and the related implementation of management control by a key organisation located in a pivotal Asian location in the global hospitality industry. In doing so, it sets out to elucidate the forms and processes of strategic social and environmental control as well their relationship to the traditional financial control system.

The study employs field-based case study of a single case operating in both regional and global context. Drawing upon documentary, survey and interview sources, the study employs structuration theory to inform its design and analysis.

The findings reveal the interaction of top-down global corporate framing and bottom-up local-level staff initiatives that combine to develop a locally focussed and differentiated social and environmental programme and expedite an associated management control and accountability system. The study also reveals the dominance of the traditional financial control system over the social and environmental management control system and the simultaneously enabling and constraining nature of that relationship.

Signification and legitimation structures can be employed in building social and environmental values and programmes which then lay the foundations for related discourse and action at multiple levels of the organisation. This also has the potential to facilitate modes of staff commitment expressed through bottom-up initiatives and control, subject to but also facilitated by the dominating influence of the organisation’s financial control system.

This study reveals the importance of national and regional governmental, cultural and social context as both potential enablers and beneficiaries of organisational, social and environmental strategy and control innovation and implementation.

The paper offers an intra-organisational perspective on social and environmental strategising and control processes and motivations that elucidates forms of action, control and accountability and the relationship between social/environmental control and financial control agendas. It further reveals the interaction between globally developed strategic and control frameworks and locally initiated bottom-up strategic initiatives and control.

This study aims to analyze the effect of online hotel reviews on the relationship between defender and prospector strategies and management control system (MCS) design.

To conduct the study, this paper administered a questionnaire to large Brazilian hotels and analyzed data from 204 hotels using structural equation modeling and fuzzy logic.

The main results show that online hotel reviews have a positive and significant effect on the relationship between prospector strategy and personnel and action control. In contrast, online reviews have a negative effect on the relationship between defender strategy and personnel, action and results controls. Thus, it is confirmed that online reviews change the relationship between strategy and MCS design.

The results show that online reviews play an important role in the decisions of hotel managers regarding MCS design. Customer demand evaluations, which are regularly available online on analysis websites, help managers adapt the MCS design, ensuring that their actions are aligned with the adopted strategy. This study adds to previous studies by showing that hotel managers use the information from customer evaluations to improve their performance.

The management literature based on the contingency theory indicates that strategy is a variable that affects MCS design. This study extends this discussion by indicating that online reviews, specifically in the hotel industry, can also be a determining factor in defining management controls. In addition, this paper points out that OHR impacts differently, depending on the strategy used and the type of management control.