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This paper aims to explore how changes in the coercive and enabling orientations of the organizational rule system influence the attention managers pay to rules.

The findings of a case study covering a multinational energy company, which are interpreted based on insights from the coercive/enabling bureaucracy literature and the evolution of rules literature, help explain how rules can direct attention.

The findings suggest that the tensions between corporate management’s intentions for an organization’s rule system and the attention middle (country) managers pay to those rules were the main driver of dialectic changes in the rule system. The more coercive the rule system became, the more middle managers diverted their attention away from rule compliance. The paper shows how the dialect change process constituted a dynamic interaction between mindful “rule setters” and mindful “rule followers.” The alignment between intentions and attention was reestablished by better balancing the coercive and enabling orientations of the rule system: enabling better flexibility, enhancing internal transparency based on local business logic and improving global transparency through closer alignment of local and global growth and efficiency goals. Surprisingly, the repair characteristic was not as important.

The findings contribute to the literature by showing how the enabling and coercive characteristics of an organizational rule system constitute managerial attention artifacts. The paper demonstrates how tensions between corporate intentions and local contingencies in the context of global organizations can lead to constrictive change and create a win-win situation for both central and local actors by better balancing the coercive and enabling orientations of the rule system. It also offers new insights into the dialectic change process in an organization’s rule system based on attention view toward organizational rules.

The construct of enabling school structure is empirically analyzed in this qualitative study of high schools. First, the theoretical underpinning of enabling school structure is developed. Then, six high schools, which were determined to have enabling structures in a large quantitative study of Ohio schools, were analyzed in depth using semi‐structured interviewing techniques. The inquiry fleshes out the specifics of the performance of principals and teachers in such organizations and describes the dynamics of enabling school structures in terms of their formalization, centralization, and functioning. Finally, the research demonstrates a natural and symbiotic relation between quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of schools.

This paper aims to draw on Adler and Borys’ (1996) concept of an enabling use of bureaucracy to examine how the integration of a single-book tax-compliant transfer pricing system into the management control system is related to the perceived success of that transfer pricing system.

Based on survey data from Swiss multinational firms, the authors test a structural equation model. In addition, the authors conduct interviews with executives from three multinational enterprises.

The authors find that the integration of a tax-compliant transfer pricing system into the management control system may be perceived to be successful in achieving both tax compliance and internal (control) purposes. This is particularly true when the transfer pricing system is transparent and can be amended in the case of fundamental management control problems.

The typical shortcomings of a survey-based research apply to this study. Future research could build on this model and more closely investigate the relationship between transfer pricing system integration and an enabling use of the transfer pricing system.

Based on this study’s findings, the authors recommend that a strong integration of tax-compliant transfer prices into the management control system should be accompanied by internal transparency and the ability to repair the transfer pricing system.

Prior research on the integration between transfer pricing and management control systems has either been analytical or based on case studies. This cross-sectional analysis provides reliable insights into different levels of integration, use and the success of transfer pricing systems.

Within the context of recent post-localism developments in the English local government, this paper aims to show, first, how management controls have become more enabling in response to changes in rules of public sector corporate governance and, secondly, how changes in management control systems gave rise to new corporate governance practices.

Theoretically, the paper mobilises the concept of enabling control to reflect on contemporary changes in public sector corporate governance. It draws on the International Federation of Accountants’ (IFAC) and Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy’s (CIPFA) new public sector governance and management control system model and data gathered from a longitudinal qualitative field study of a local authority in North East England. The field study used interviews, observation and documentation review.

This paper suggests specific ways in which the decentralisation of policymaking and performance measurement in a local authority (present case) gave rise to enabling corporate governance and how corporate governance and management control practices went some way to aid in the pursuit of the public interest. In particular, it shows that the management control system can be designed at the operational level to be enabling. The significance of global transparency for supporting corporate governance practices around public interest is observed. This paper reaffirms that accountability is but one element of public sector corporate governance. Rather, public sector corporate governance also pursues integrity, openness, defining outcomes, determining interventions, leadership and capacity and risk and performance management.

Insights into uses of such enabling practices in public sector corporate governance are relevant for many countries in which public sector funding has been cut, especially since the 2007/2008 global financial crisis.

This paper introduces the concept of enabling control into the public sector corporate governance and control debate by fleshing out the categories of public sector corporate governance and management control suggested recently by IFAC and CIPFA drawing on observed practices of a local government entity.

The purpose of this research is twofold: to test a theory of academic optimism in Taiwan elementary schools and to expand the theory by adding new variables, collective responsibility and enabling school structure, to the model.

Structural equation modeling was used to test, refine, and expand an organizational path model of student achievement first developed in the USA.

The proposed organizational model was supported in Taiwan and was consistent with the initial studies done in the USA. Further, two concepts were added to the model, enabling structure and collective responsibility, both of which had significant indirect effects on student achievement through academic optimism. Moreover, the theoretical foundations (efficacy, trust, and academic emphasis) of the latent construct of academic optimism were confirmed again in this sample of schools in Taiwan.

The findings support an organizational model of student achievement, which has application in both the USA and Taiwan. The original model was supported, refined, and extended. Academic optimism is at the center of the model and explains student achievement for all students. Collective responsibility and enabling school structure both predict academic optimism directly and student achievement indirectly.

This research aims to explore the enabling and constraining effects of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and speculate on how these can be linked to the four generic roles of operations management (OM) proposed by Slack et al.

This research understands ERP as boundary objects characterised by modularity, abstraction, accommodation, and standardization. An in‐depth cross‐disciplinary literature review and role synthesis is conducted.

Four enabling and three constraining effects of ERP are deduced from existing literature. ERP and OM are linked conceptually. Based on the identified effects of ERP, the paper speculates on the managerial tasks of the production and operations manager (POM) in an ERP environment and lists a set of central concerns of potential relevance to POM and to future research.

The identified roles of ERP and their implications could be empirically tested using case based and survey research.

The results provide insights into how ERP has multiple and parallel roles, and how these roles are relevant to the function of OM. Such knowledge is valuable for practicing POMs in managing the implementation and design of ERP to support the different domains of OM.

Current studies of the effects of ERP and their link to the practice of OM tend to focus on one or a few roles of the emerging system. Such studies do not properly take into account the modularised and pluralistic nature of ERP. This research provides a platform from where future research on the effects, managerial dilemmas and implications of ERP can be reconciled across research communities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how principals, deputy principals, heads of departments (HoDs) and teachers as leaders exercise their agency within and through the organisational structure of their schools to improve academic quality.

A case study was conducted in the wider context of school-based leadership. Principals, deputy principals, HoDs and teachers selected by means of purposive sampling from six primary and secondary schools in Harare Province of Zimbabwe participated in the study.

Leaders in schools in Harare Province were found to have the capacity to use their agency within and through the organisational structure to improve pass rates. They were able to use their agency to work within the supposed rigid bureaucratic organisational structures to enable bureaucratic organisational structures, or, in participants’ views, democratic structures.

Some limitations of the research ought to be considered. The research scope and site had its limitations. The research site was limited to a few primary and secondary schools in Harare Province (one out of ten provinces) of Zimbabwe. Although the sampling procedures were implemented to ensure good representation of participants’ views, the sampling was limited to a few schools. Owing to time and financial constraints, a larger sample could not be selected to conduct the interviews. These limitations are acknowledged, but they do not undervalue the significance of the study, as they can provide potential avenues for further research. For example, the study may be replicated in rural provinces of Zimbabwe. Such further research could help improve school leadership in Zimbabwe.

Principals, deputy principals, HoDs and teachers as leaders can exercise their agency in the structure of their schools to improve academic quality, expressed as and measured by pass rates. School leaders who have a positive attitude and requisite experience are able to change the rigid bureaucratic structures of their schools to enable bureaucratic structures, which are similar to democratic structures.

This paper provides a critical perspective on how leaders exercise their agency in the context of the organisational structure of their schools to improve academic quality.

This study aims to answer the research question of how a calculative regime for public universities is implemented, how and under which conditions its symbolic use emerges and what kind of unintended consequences occur over time.

The empirical material presented in the paper derives methodically from a longitudinal qualitative research approach analyzing higher education systems (HES)-reforms in Austria. To better understand the consequences of the organizational changes in line with the new legal framework, 2 series of qualitative interviews in 2011/2012 and 2016/2017 on the field level and the organizational level were conducted.

Identifying two enabling consequences from the tactical behaviors of resistance and symbolic use, i.e. new processes of communication and horizontal network building, allows for theory-building with a focus on the dynamics how accounting begins, then next becomes an established infrastructure, is then destabilized and re-elaborated before it becomes, again, an infrastructure which is different from before.

Although the findings are based on a national empirical context, they are linked to the international discourse on HES in transition and the role of calculative regimes including performance measurement and management attitudes and instruments. They are relevant for an international research community open-minded toward differentiated case studies in a longitudinal perspective on HES-reforms.

When reflecting on their own specific settings governing bodies and practitioners managing the transition of HES may find insights from longitudinal case studies inspiring. The dynamics initiated by new calculative regimes installed need a sensitive framework to handle dissent, resistance, tactical behaviors and changes in power relations between the field level and the organizational level.

This is a unique longitudinal case study of the Austrian HES and its public universities in transition.

The pupil control ideology (PCI) studies originated at The Pennsylvania State University under the direction of Professor Donald J. Willower. Describes the beginning and evolution of the PCI studies and the role of theory in their development. PCI inquiry is now in its fourth decade and the concept of pupil control ideology and its measure (PCI form) continue to be useful to researchers as they analyze behavior in school organizations.