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The study aims to highlight and understand, and bring the human agency into the debate on the theory of normative control. While, the previous literature has highlighted the problem of the missing subject. However, the actual human agency in terms of agential properties has not been seriously addressed. This study is an attempt to overcome this problem of the missing subject.

A two-phase design inspired by retroductive inference was adopted for this study. In the first phase, abduction was used to explore the literature on normative control to highlight the forces of attraction, which may pull the employees to participate willingly within normative control systems. In the second phase, following retroductive inference, agential explanations of the forces of attraction identified in the first phase were explored by venturing into other related fields, e.g. psychology and sociology.

The study highlights four strategies used by organizations using normative control, i.e. comfort zoning, relational bonding, moral trapping and elitist appeal. These strategies rely on attractive forces. These forces of attraction pull employees to participate in the normative control system. The attractive element in the identified strategies is due to the fact that these strategies target specific agential properties, i.e. the need for comfort, sense of belonging, moral agency and pride. Overall, the findings suggest that individuals drive their concerns from culture but in relation to their capacity as needy beings for being enculturated.

Theoretically, this study adds conceptual strength to the explanations of normative control. It is suggested that neglect of human agency renders explanations conceptually weak. The study fills this gap in the research. Practically, this study would be beneficial for better design and implementation of normative control. Several studies have pointed out that normative control does not yield the intended results. Out of many reasons, a lack of understanding of human agency is a major cause of unsuccessful attempts to normatively control employees. This study provides some basis to understand the human subject for better design of soft systems of control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study that explores agential properties with reference to normative control systems. This study is important for researchers and practitioners.

Cyberbullying has become one of the reasons behind the increase in psychological and medical problems. A need to prevent recurrences of cyberbullying incidents and discourage bullies from further bullying the victims has risen. This problem has attracted the attention of all stakeholders across the globe. Various researchers have developed theories and interventions to detect and stop bullying behavior. Previously, researchers focused on helping victims, but as the times have changed, so has the focus of researchers. This study aims to analyze scientific research articles and review papers to understand the development of the knowledge base on the topic.

This study analyzes the performance of literature on cyberbullying perpetration (CBP) using the widely accepted bibliometric analysis techniques: performance analysis and science mapping. The study is based on a dataset extracted from the Web of Science database. Initially, 2,792 articles between 2007 and 2022 were retrieved, which were filtered down to 441. The filter was based on various criteria, but primarily on CBP. VOSViewer and MS Excel were used to analyze the data. In addition, VOSViewer was used to create “bibliometric citations, co-citations, and co-word maps.”

The findings include publication and citation quantum and trends, the top 20 active countries, the most significant research articles and leading journals in this domain. Major themes or clusters identified were “Cyberbullying and victim behavior,” bullying behavior, adolescents and intervention, “cyberbullying associations,” and “cyberbullying personality associations.”

The study is unique because it analyses research articles based on cyberbullies, whereas past studies explored only the victims' side. Further, the present study used the Web of Science database, whereas most studies use the Scopus database.