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Two metaphors of human motivation have dominated justice theory and research: homo economicus (people as rational utility maximizers) and homo socialis (people as status and social value maximizers). This chapter reviews theory and research inspired by a recent third perspective: homo moralis, that is, people as innately concerned about morality. When people have strong moral convictions at stake, their perceptions of outcome fairness and decision acceptance are shaped more by whether outcomes are consistent with perceivers’ moral priorities than by whether authorities act in procedurally fair ways; moreover, whether authorities yield morally correct outcomes shapes subsequent perceptions of the legitimacy of these authorities or authority systems. Emotion plays an important role in both of these effects.

In complex environments, the use of technology to enhance the capability of people is commonplace. In rapidly changing and often unpredictable environments, it is not enough that these human-automated “teams” perform well when events go as expected. Instead, the human operators and automated aids must be flexible, capable of responding to rare or unanticipated events. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the Framework of Automation Use (Dzindolet, Beck, Pierce, & Dawe, 2001) as it relates to adaptive automation. Specifically, our objectives are to: (1) examine a number of factors that determine how people can effectively integrate their activities with their machine partners in fluid environments and (2) consider the implications of these findings for future research.

This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance of managers, and employees and can be enabled by sufficient use of management controls. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

Based on bibliometric analyses and a structured literature review of academic research studies from the organizational, management and accounting literature, the authors develop a conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work.

First, the authors propose that the use of formal management controls in a system (i.e. the levers of the control framework) is more powerful than using unrelated formal controls only. Second, they suggest that the interaction of a formal control system together with informal controls working as a control package can even stretch the perception of meaningful work. Third, they argue that the intensity of the control use matters to enhance the perception of meaningful work (inverted u-shaped relationship).

This study presents the first conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. It provides valuable implications for practice and future research in the field of performance management.

This chapter focuses upon operators' automation usage decisions (AUDs), choices in which people have the option of relying on automation or employing a manual or less technologically advanced means of control. Misuse, the over-utilization of automation, and disuse, the under-utilization of automation, result from inappropriate AUDs. Three causes of misuse and disuse were identified. Operators may: (1) not recognize that both automated and manual alternatives are available (recognition errors), (2) inaccurately estimate the utilities of the automated and/or manual options (appraisal errors), or (3) knowingly select the alternative with the lowest expected outcome (action errors). A decision-making model was used to organize the literature, identify new areas of inquiry, and examine the effects of a number of variables known to affect AUDs. These included machine reliability and consistency, performance feedback, trust in automation, self-confidence in manual control, perceived utility, and the automation bias.

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.