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The purpose of this paper is to recognise the importance of the interplay between performance measurement, performance management, employee engagement and performance. However, the nature of this phenomenon is not well understood. Analysis of the literature reveals two dimensions of organisational control, technical and social, that are used to develop a conceptual framework for studying this phenomenon.

The authors conducted explorative action research involving pilot and control groups from two departments of a UK bank.

The authors show that an intervention on the social controls has led to changes in technical controls of the performance measurement system resulting in significant improvement in employee engagement and performance.

The research was undertaken with two cases from a single organisation. Further fine-grained, longitudinal research is required to fully understand this phenomenon in a wider range of contexts.

The paper contributes to the theory on performance measures and gives guidance on how organisations might design their performance measurement systems to enhance employee engagement and performance.

The study makes three contributions. First, the authors introduce a new theoretical framework based the organisational control theory providing a basis for future research. Second, through nine propositions, the authors establish a causal relationship between performance measurement, performance management, employee engagement and performance. Third, the authors identify a gap in knowledge concerning the design of organisational controls in the context of the process that is being managed.

The paper seeks to investigate the effects of psychological contract on control mechanisms in outsourced ISD projects, based on control theories and psychological contract theories.

The paper is a multiple case study involving five outsourced projects completed by one of the largest and most successful telecommunication vendors in China. The company was the client in three of the projects and the vendor in the other two.

Based on first‐hand observations by the first author over a two‐year period and follow‐up interviews, four scenarios of match and mismatch of psychological contract between the client and vendor are identified, labeled as mutual transaction, client vulnerable, vendor vulnerable, and mutual loyalty. Moreover, the effect of psychological contract in shaping organizational control and outsourcing outcomes in the four different scenarios is revealed. For example, mutual transaction was associated with an emphasis on outcome control by the client. In contrast, mutual loyalty was associated with more informal control (self‐control and clan control). Furthermore, in the cases of mismatch between the client's and vendor's psychological relationship, the client implemented more behavior control and encouraged self‐control by its partner.

This research is, to the best of the author's knowledge, one of the first attempts to bring together psychological contract theory and organizational control theory in the domain of IT offshore outsourcing research. It reveals the effect of psychological contract in shaping organizational control in the four different scenarios labeled as mutual transaction, client vulnerable, vendor vulnerable, and mutual loyalty.

In this article a critique of stakeholder theory is presented. The analysis highlights several concerns regarding the scientific rigor of this body of knowledge revealing the assumptions and inconsistencies that underpin its main propositions. The discussion shows in particular some of the internal contradictions between, on the one hand, the ideology of social good, and on the other hand, the ideology of control which we argue is not fully accounted for in the way stakeholder theory was popularized in recent years. Our critique opens up more possibilities for engaging with stakeholder theory acknowledging the underlying values that are at stake, thus, revealing the political and value‐laden nature of the concept of stake‐holder. What we seek to draw particular attention to is the way stake‐holder analysis reveals the challenges when not only subjectivities but identities are at stake. This latter point we hope will encourage greater reflexivity among theorists and researchers in this field, recognizing that their personal biases and partialities influence their scholarship, and the way they shape the ideologies stakeholder theory is presented by.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational climate impacts the speed of strategic change (SSC) for firms in transitional economies and whether if the effects were contingent on internal control mechanisms.

A theoretical model including five constructs is developed. The questionnaire survey is deployed to scale main constructs, including organizational climate, such as open communication and hierarchical bureaucracy, internal controls such as strategic and financial control, and SSC. The moderation regression method in five steps is employed to test all hypotheses using the survey data from the 120 sampled Chinese firms.

The findings show that open communication has a positive effect on SCC, whereas hierarchical bureaucracy has a negative effect on SSC. Furthermore, strategic control positively moderates the relationship between open communication and SSC but negatively moderates the relationship between hierarchical bureaucracy and SSC; meanwhile, financial control negatively moderates the relationship between open communication and SSC but positively moderates the relationship between hierarchical bureaucracy and SSC.

This research integrates organizational climate and internal control mechanisms into the framework of strategic change to investigate how firms achieve fast strategic change through aligning organizational climate with proper organizational control mechanisms. The findings advance the authors’ understanding of the organizational climate, internal controls, and strategic change literature, and offer valuable managerial insights for managers in situations when strategic change is of central importance in the transitional economies.

This study aims to investigate whether an organization that is entrepreneurial oriented can benefit from having a formal control structure and process in new product development (NPD). This study investigates two well-known control mechanisms in NPD, namely, stage-gate system (SGS) and project management (PM), as well as decision-making comprehensiveness (DMC), reflecting the amount of information processing and investigative activities undertaken.

Survey data were collected from 238 Australian small and medium enterprises. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The findings of this study suggest that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) directly impacts new product performance and indirectly does so through DMC. While both control mechanisms positively impact DMC, they affect the EO–DMC relationship differently. While SGS positively moderates the EO–DMC relationship, PM negatively does so. However, the use of SGS and PM enhances the effect of EO on DMC.

This research provides managers with insights into the design of structure and process in NPD to support interfunctional coordination and firm strategy. The findings of this study suggest that managers should be amenable to the application of control mechanisms and DMC. The calibration of the right mix of control systems is required to ensure that EO can contribute to decision-making in the NPD process.

On the surface, the implementation of EO requires flexibility while the control mechanisms and extensive information processing are seen as restricted structures for NPD activities. However, rather than viewing EO and control structure as counterintuitive elements in NPD, the results suggest that appropriate use of control structure can support organizational strategy and decision-making activities, which subsequently enhance NPD outcomes.

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.

This study examines the connection between different digital-twin characteristics and organizational control. Specifically, the study aims to examine whether the digital-twin characteristics exploration, guidance and gamification will affect formal and social control.

The study is based on an analysis of survey results from 139 respondents comprising applied university students who use digital twins.

The results offer an interesting contribution to the literature. The authors consider the digital-twin characteristics exploration, guidance and gamification and investigate their contribution to two types of organizational controls: formal and social. The results show that two characteristics, exploration and gamification, affect the extent to which digital twins can be utilized for social control. Exploration and guidance’s role is significant concerning the extent to which digital twins can be utilized for formal control.

This study contributes to literature by considering multiple digital-twin characteristics and their contribution to two different control outcomes. First, it diverges from previous technical-oriented research by investigating digital twins in a human context. Second, the study is the first to examine digital twins’ effects from an organizational control perspective systematically.

The opinion that the spiritual controls the physical gave rise to this chapter. The spiritual in this chapter was regarded as the philosophical and organisational theories controlling the practical aspect of construction supply chain management (CSCM). It was discovered that there is a significant omission in adopting theories to explain supply chain management's (SCM) adaptation and modelling in the construction industry. Therefore, this chapter reviews theories such as resource-based view theory (RBV), principal agency theory (PAT), resource dependency theory (RDT), transaction cost economics theory (TCE) and game theory. Each of the theories was analysed to uncover how they support the practice and variables for modelling the construction supply chain (CSC). The existing models of the CSC were also examined in this chapter. It was found that most models were developed drawing on the frameworks of the global supply chain forum (GSCF) and supply chain operations reference model (SCOR). Owing to the shortcoming of GSCF, this book adopted the framework and principles of SCOR for modelling the management of CSC in the era of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). Also, most of the existing CSC models, such as the seamless CSCM model, maturity model and others, were developed using the SCOR framework.

Informed by upper echelons theory, the purpose of this paper is to synthesize the current knowledge on finance managers in family firms and to suggest valuable future research avenues.

The paper is organized as a theory-informed literature review. Based on a keyword search in electronic databases, 17 journal articles that deal with finance managers in family firms were identified. In light of upper echelons theory, the results of these articles were analyzed and future research needs were identified.

Overall, the current knowledge on finance managers in family firms is scant and fragmented. At the same time, this paper’s review findings indicate that finance managers can play decisive roles in family firms, which is why we need further research on their roles. Upper echelons theory is suggested in this paper as a theoretical framework that is well suited to guide such further research.

This is the first review of the academic literature on finance managers in family firms. Its main value lies in providing a theory-informed synthesis of current research on this topic and highlighting fruitful future research avenues.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of organisational conditions and workplace characteristics in midcareer and senior employees’ intention to volitionally provide career support to junior organisational members, their protégés.

Hypotheses are tested using multilevel linear modelling on a heterogeneous sample of Dutch employees ages 29 to 69 who participated in a vignette study in the autumn of 2017.

In line with the hypotheses, the findings of this study show that volitional (informal) mentoring is positively related to an organisation’s endorsement of intrinsic values (e.g. learning opportunities) and negatively to the presence of hindrance demands (e.g. time pressure).

Practitioners could facilitate co-mentor consultation, employ autonomy-supportive direct supervisors and fulfil psychological contract obligations by providing job security and learning opportunities. Organisations could also lower time pressures through job carving.

This study extends extant mentoring research by combining insights from perceived organisational support (POS) and self-determination theory (SDT) to examine the role organisational conditions and workplace characteristics play in aiding or hindering volitional mentoring. It enriches extant knowledge management studies on the link between organisational aspects and (intended) knowledge sharing behaviour by showing that similar organisational motivators predict volitional mentoring, thereby launching a call to study knowledge management through volitional mentoring using a SDT- and POS-based lens. A methodological novelty is the reliance on a vignette study.