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Most, if not all, management control tools were formulated for firms employing an industrial value creation logic (i.e., Ford, McDonald’s, and Wal‐Mart). We argue that given the growth, both in number and importance, of firms employing a knowledge value creation logic (i.e., Accenture, Goldman Sachs, and Clifford Chance) and firms employing a network logic (i.e., Verizon, eBay, and Expedia) that these control tools should be revisited in light of this potentially critical contingency. This paper outlines the key characteristics of knowledge intensive firms and network service firms and then examines how these contingencies impact Simons’ (1995) Levers of Control and Kaplan and Norton’s (1996) Balanced Scorecard. We find that whilst each lever/perspective is still relevant for each value creation logic, the relative importance and thus intensity of use should vary between logics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of top management control in stimulating innovation through their effect on the creation of knowledge in new product development (NPD) projects. Top management has a crucial role in stimulating innovation in companies, in particular as top managers affect knowledge creation through their interaction with project teams before and during an NPD project, which can of course affect innovation.

Through comparative case‐based research in two companies in high‐velocity industries, chosen through theoretical sampling, the authors have studied six NPD projects.

The control top management exercise over an NPD project influences the creation of knowledge in different ways, both hampering and facilitating knowledge creation. In particular, this control focuses on explicit knowledge, and not tacit knowledge, which may reduce the overall capacity for knowledge creation and ultimately innovation.

The results are considered to be generalizable within high‐velocity industries. In terms of future research the results should be tested in other industries using either case‐based research or by increasing the sample and doing survey‐type research.

The advice, or perhaps challenge, for managers is to know when to exercise control, when not to and what type of control to exercise. In particular the paper highlights the importance of managers not solely controlling projects by focusing on explicit knowledge in the project, but also by understanding that tacit knowledge is necessary in order to facilitate knowledge creation and innovation.

The paper helps clarify the relationship between top management control and knowledge creation by specially examining how and why top management control hampers or facilitates knowledge creation.

The management and the control of knowledge‐intensive organizations have recently been subject to empirical studies. Much of the literature suggests that management control, defined and operationalized in a variety of ways and examined within different traditions, in essence affects co‐workers negatively. On the other hand, proponents of management control practices such as consultants stress the positive and productive aspects of such practices. Contrary to these skeptical and overtly rosy views, this paper seeks to contribute with a different perspective on the uses of total quality management (TQM) in organizations.

This paper presents a study of the Swedish insurance company Agria employing a number of TQM methods and tools to monitor, control and evaluate the performance of the activities from a social embeddedness perspective.

Seeking to encourage accounts within such an affirmative view, the paper calls for more research into the knowledge workers' purposive action embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations. That is, management control mechanisms are neither imposed from above, nor are they procedures that can be individually selected and enacted. Instead, management control practices are embedded in social relations including norms, values, and preexisting standard operating procedures.

By conceiving of management control practices as being socially embedded, the Scylla and Charybdis of under‐ and oversocialized theories of management control can be avoided. That is, TQM practices may be regarded as “technologies of the self” that knowledge workers may use as part of their day‐to‐day work.

The paper presents an affirmative view of TQM and shows how TQM practices are used in a Swedish insurance company.

This article sets out to investigate the relationship between performance management systems (PMSs) and knowledge in public universities. In particular, this paper intends to verify how different choices related to PMS affect the nature of knowledge, in terms of the well‐known tacit vs explicit dichotomy.

The empirical focus is on the recent PMS changes that have been developing in the “modernisation agenda” of the Italian public sector. In particular, 15 case studies of PMS design in Italian universities are presented. The interpretation of the results is based on the Simon's theoretical framework related to the four levers of control.

Results show how PMSs (in the different forms presented in the universities’ evaluation plans) could represent an important social tool to facilitate the management of organizational knowledge, combining explicit and tacit forms of knowledge.

This paper tackles a topic neglected in the knowledge management literature, aiming to open up a discussion on the possible interconnections between PMSs and knowledge in the public arena.

This paper seeks to develop insights into control, power, consent and commitment with virtual knowledge workers who are removed from the immediate sphere of influence of management and co‐workers.

This research is a detailed case study of a highly successful Scandinavian engineering company. A post‐structuralist approach is used to understand how the modes of influence on knowledge worker productivity within the organisation come into being and operate across boundaries of time, space and organisational structure. The notion of the panopticon is used to identify and characterise forms of control and undertake interpretive and critical analysis of interview data and staff behaviour.

It was found that the totality of the modes of power relations operating upon virtual knowledge workers in this case study comprises a complex and sophisticated ensemble of control and constraint. Whilst initial observations indicate that control is restricted to a small set of direct controls, the research led one to observe a complex, pervasive web of integrated and overlapping constraints emanating from the external and internal panopticon.

The critical approach leads one to a pragmatic understanding of the range of influences which keep virtual knowledge workers “on task”. Also a better understanding of the “network effect” of these constraints and their co‐reinforcement is reached, which may well further understanding of managing the performance of virtual knowledge workers.

This paper aims to develop a methodology of business knowledge creation based on a synthesis between the perspective of reality informed by pragmatic constructionism (PC) and critical approaches to narrative analysis informed by antenarrative concepts.

The paper identifies commonalities and contrasts between narrative and PC. Interpreting an original case study of a hotel by deploying both methodologies, the paper shows how a synthesis of the two approaches can help to construct management control knowledge.

PC and narrative have many overlaps and complementarities. Practitioners like stories both to make sense of their own roles and to develop personal strategic agendas. Antenarrative concepts demonstrate the potentially generative properties of organizational storytelling. The PC approach also constructs corporate narratives but, additionally, provides a set of criteria against which we can evaluate the stories of practitioners on the basis of “does it work?”.

More interpretive field study processes are called for as a way of testing the robustness of the research design developed in the paper.

A successful management control topos has to be business-specific and co-authored with contributions from participants both inside and outside the organization. Narrative and PC research methodologies both encourage reflexivity, in which the researchers explicitly explore not just the positions of their interviewees, but also their own position and reactions. The creation of business knowledge is seen as a co-production between the researchers and the researched, as they share concepts and reflections during the fieldwork process.

The paper compares and contrasts two interpretive research methodologies, narrative and a pragmatic constructivist perspective. Especially when the concept of antenarrative is deployed, the two methodologies offer fruitful possibilities for dialogical conversation, as they espouse slightly different views on the nature of actor reality.

This study examines the control issues related to three major flows among MNC subsidiaries: knowledge flows, product flows and capital flows. It also investigates the relationship between the strategic management style of headquarters and the control approaches employed. The results show the dominance of output control, even in situations where researchers have argued that they should not be relied upon. The study also found that as knowledge flow increases, reliance on financial control decreases and reliance on socialisation control increases. Consistent with other studies, the dominant management style is the strategic control style, while the least popular is the financial control style. The paper calls for using alternative theoretical lenses, such as institutional theory, to provide additional insights not available through the contingency lens.

The purpose of this paper is to question whether the balanced scorecard provides an appropriate control mechanism for management control of knowledge workers.

A case study approach is taken to explore the way in which management control of employees engaged in research and development is undertaken.

The key finding of this work is that the balanced scorecard is not in itself a useful approach to management control of knowledge workers but provides an important mechanism for ensuring that there is alignment between the strategic objectives of an organisation and the work being undertaken.

The inductive approach taken in a single-company case study has provided a rich data set for exploratory research, however, this research design limits the generalisability of the findings.

The work provides insights into how the balanced scorecard can be used in knowledge-worker environments.

The balanced scorecard is often reported as a tool that allows organisations to cascade strategic priorities down to the level of the individual though the use of measures. This research provides an alternative explanation of how the balanced scorecard can support knowledge worker control.

The aim of this study is to examine whether the relationship between knowledge management (KM) strategy and firm performance is contingent on human resource management (HRM) control systems.

Surveys were collected in computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing industries in Taiwan. A total of 111 presidents returned usable questionnaires.

When firms emphasize personalization strategy, the use of behavior control will enhance firm performance. In contrast, when firms emphasize codification strategy, the use of output control will make firm performance better. If personalization and codification strategy were emphasized simultaneously, firms would not use single HRM control system to better performance.

First, the use of a self‐rating performance measure may constitute a limitation of the study. Second, this study is confined to a limited scope of control system. Third, perhaps the most obvious limitation is inherent to the selected research methodology that the one‐time data resemble a snapshot. Finally, it is not known how the selection of industries and geographical areas affect this study's findings.

Results from this study suggest that managers can leverage their best performance by matching the HRM control system to a particular KM strategy.

This study contributes to the knowledge about the importance of HRM control for KM methods. The firm's HRM control systems can be expected to contribute significantly to KM‐performance. Understanding how an organization can use its control systems to support KM will help firms sustain their competitive advantage.

The aim of this paper is to expose the power of informal control mechanisms over explicit knowledge transfer through information communication technology (ICT) systems in subsidiaries of a multinational enterprise (MNE).

The research used a case study approach consistent with the purpose of exploring control/knowledge transfer relationships. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with managers across 19 sites in an MNE. Analysed data were thematically organised into two case studies for comparison.

The results show that when control is exerted from bottom-up, knowledge transfer barriers are overcome, quality of outcomes is increased and new and incremental knowledge innovation is more likely to become organisational.

The findings signal a caution for managers to assess the suitability of control type on knowledge transfer incentives to leverage quality knowledge outcomes. By using informal methods, subsidiary managers’ local autonomy and power to resist centralised management objectives was positively moderated.

The paper exposes alternative control methods for exploiting subsidiary knowledge within an MNE. The research is unique in that it identifies a superior role for bottom-up social control to elicit explicit knowledge sharing behaviours through ICT where bureaucratic reward-based control had failed.