Search results

Project managers rely on control strategies to deliver excellent outputs. However, little is known about how clients' project managers select control strategies in projects which are knowledge-intensive and have intangible outputs. This study aims to examine how clients' project managers select project control strategies in professional service projects.

A questionnaire survey of 360 architectural and engineering (A/E) design projects was adopted. Data were analyzed through the hierarchical regression.

Both clients' knowledge of measuring outcomes and process uncertainty give rise to their project managers setting up behavior and social controls. Level of process uncertainty positively moderates the impact of client's knowledge of measuring outcomes on outcome control.

This study mainly examined the client's knowledge of measuring outcomes and process uncertainties. Future studies could be conducted to expand the scope by including other contextual factors, for instance market and regulatory factors.

From the client side, if they want to simultaneously adopt outcome, behavior and social controls, they would need to increase their knowledge of measuring outcomes by adopting established assessment tools or appointing a third party to assist in design outcome evaluation.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by showing that the level of intangibility of project outputs influences the types of control system which project managers adopt.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between managerial control strategies, role-stress and employee adaptiveness among call centre employees.

Based on a conceptual model, a questionnaire-based survey methodology is adopted. Data were collected from call centre employees in India and the data were analysed through PLS methodology.

The study finds that outcome control and activity control increase role-stress while capability control does not have a significant impact. The interaction between outcome control and activity control also tends to impact role-stress of employees. Role-stress felt by employees has significant negative impact on employee adaptiveness.

The sampling approach was convenience based affecting the generalisability of the results.

The paper provides guidelines for utilising managerial control approaches in a service setting.

The paper looks at managerial control approaches in a service setting – a topic not quite researched before.

Previous sales control research has limited the definition of outcome controls exclusively to sales outcomes in an outside sales context. In addition to sales outcome controls, inside sales managers use phone operational outcomes to influence inside sales agent performance, supporting the need to expand the broader definition of outcome controls. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore the need to bifurcate outcome controls into two distinct variables: sales and phone operational controls. Researchers know little about the application of sales outcome controls beyond sales-only outcomes, which, in turn, limits the definition of outcome controls.

Through the utilization of survey, secondary operational data and sales manager’s feedback, this paper demonstrates that the definition of outcome controls needs to be divided into two distinct areas, sales and phone operational controls for inside sales agents, which, in turn, acts collectively to impact an inside sales agent’s job performance and satisfaction.

This research demonstrates that inside sales managers depend on both sales and phone operational outcome controls to drive sales agent performance, varying in degrees by industry. Even as inside sales managers focus on creating an employee-centric autonomous motivational work culture, the overarching controlling factors associated with phone operational outcomes dampen an inside sales agent’s performance and job satisfaction.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, as the first sales control research to examine an inside sales context, this study provides support to further study sales controls in an inside sales context. This research can be enhanced by examining business-to-consumer inside sales environments, behavior controls, greater sample size and additional work outcomes such as turnover and tenure.

The findings have important implications because they can help practitioners understand the effect that both sales and phone operational outcomes have on sales agent performance. It also illuminates the need for inside sales managers to be less controlling in their focus on phone operational outcomes, as such a practice has a negative influence on key sales agent job outcomes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to triangulate multiple data sources to illustrate the need to evaluate both sales and phone operational outcomes as broader components of sales outcome controls. The study of sales controls in a different sales context suggests that sales management controls may differ by sales context, opening the door to extend the vast sales control literature beyond its current context of outside sales.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which user liaison behavior and outcome control influence the process performance of information technology (IT) projects and how the IT experience, behavior observability, and outcome measurability of user liaisons affect behavior and outcome control.

A research model that integrates the IT experience, behavior observability, outcome measurability, behavior and outcome control, and performance from the perspective of user liaisons is developed. Quantitative data are obtained from 63 completed IT projects. Partial least squares technique is used to evaluate the measurement model. Hypotheses are tested through hierarchical regression analysis.

User liaisons with high IT experience exhibit decreased behavior control but increased outcome control. The outcome control of user liaisons is effective in the process performance of IT projects, whereas their behavior control insignificantly affects performance. However, the behavior observability and outcome measurability of user liaisons strengthen the effectiveness of behavior and outcome control. The behavior and outcome control of user liaisons also vary across different industries and project types.

The results of this study highlight the joint effects of the IT experience, abilities, and control decisions of user liaisons. Although the outcome control of user liaisons is an appropriate control mechanism in IT projects in consideration of the strengths of these liaisons in business knowledge and their control expenditures, the behavior control of user liaisons may also be effective in process performance if these liaisons possess high levels of behavior observability and outcome measurability.

Reports a study of sales management in UK companies, which explores the relationship between behaviour‐based control systems and outcome‐based control systems. Although conventional theory has suggested that behaviour performance and outcome performance result from different stimuli, we find that behaviour‐based control is positively associated with both behaviour performance and outcome performance. We find also that organizational commitment and sales territory design are significantly related to salesforce performance. This suggests a number of important avenues for improving salesforce performance. These findings and the growing emphasis on building long‐term, collaborative buyer‐seller relationships favour the use of behaviour‐based control systems in many sales management situations, and suggest a new agenda for management attention in improving salesforce effectiveness.

For the past several decades, the sales control literature has focused on the outside sales context. This study aims to extend sales control research by examining formal and informal sales controls, embodied by cultural controls, used by sales managers in an inside sales context, where the sales agent’s performance focus extends beyond sales outcomes to include the influence of operational phone outcomes.

Based on 232 B2C and B2B inside sales agent survey responses, this study presents evidence that in an inside sales department, this study focuses on the congruent effect of formal sales and cultural sales controls on inside sales agent overall performance.

Based on 232 B2C and B2B inside sales agent survey responses, this study presents evidence that in an inside sales department, the operational focus of sales activities and resultant operational performance mediates the relationship between sales controls and inside sales agent sales performance, whereas cultural controls centered on maximizing inside sales autonomous motivation positively moderates the effect of operational outcomes on an inside sales agent’s sales performance.

By focusing on the tenants of an inside sales agent’s overall performance, this research provides practitioners a holistic view of the inherent conflict inside sales managers must balance between the impact of formal sales controls and the benefits of cultural controls.

By being the only study to examine sales controls in an inside sales context, with a broad definition of overall performance to include both sales and operational phone outcomes, this study extends sales control research to a new sales context. The need to jointly focus on operational results, as well as sales outcomes, illustrate the importance of cultural controls compared to other sales processes and outcome controls

Green supplier selection (GSS) is acknowledged as important governance in green supply chain management (GSCM). However, this paper argues that GSS is not a stand-alone GSCM governance mode that determines manufacturers' environmental performance but rather one that needs to be aligned with contractual governance, particularly contractual control and adaptation, to promote environmental performance effects. This paper adopts GSS as ex ante governance and introduces behavior and outcome controls as ex post contractual control and adaptation, respectively. Thus, this paper addresses how GSS affects environmental performance directly and indirectly through behavior and outcome controls within transaction cost economics (TCE) theory.

This research model was tested on 300 Chinese manufacturing firms, and multiple regression analysis was used to validate our hypotheses.

A direct relationship was observed between GSS and environmental performance. This direct relationship is positively mediated by behavior and outcome controls.

This paper develops and elucidates an integrative green supply chain process proceeding from the implementation of ex ante GSS and ex post contractual governance to the realization of environmental performance. Furthermore, this paper considers two different forms of contractual governance, specifically contractual control and adaptation, and explains how they can be implemented using behavior and outcome controls from the perspective of TCE theory.

This study aims to investigate the dual effects of commitment-based governance on the relationship between formal control and public–private partnership (PPP) project performance. Formal control and relationship governance are two primary forms of inter-organizational governance that affect project performance. However, little is known about the interplay between formal control and commitment and its effect on PPP projects. More specifically, previous studies have failed to distinguish the function routes of relationship governance resulting from different types of formal control (process and outcome control).

This study adopts a questionnaire survey to empirically investigate the mechanism that commitment-based governance influences the relationship between formal control and PPP performance. After collecting data from public and private sector professionals involved in 101 Chinese PPP projects, the theoretical framework proposed in this paper is verified by the empirical results of the hierarchical multiple regression analysis.

The results show that process control has an inverted U-shaped effect and outcome control has a significant positive influence on PPP project performance. Furthermore, commitment moderates the effect of formal control on PPP project performance by increasing the relevance of outcome control and mediates the inverted U-shaped relationship between process control and PPP project performance.

Managers should recognize that process control is a double-edged sword and prevent the overuse of process control. Managers should direct their attention toward efforts to improve the commitment, which allows for the effectiveness of outcome control strategies. Additionally, this study new measurement method for relationship governance suggests that managers should be aware of the difference in parties' perceptions of the relationship.

This study allows for a comprehensive understanding of the relationship governance-control nexus from a commitment perspective. The authors bring into light the dual role of commitment-based governance in the relationship between the two types of formal control and PPP project performance. Moreover, the new approach to measure relationship governance offers valuable insight into the measurement of variables about individual's perception.

This study examines the interplay of formal types of control (input, behavior and outcome) exercised on municipally owned corporations (MOCs). It further investigates whether particular informal contingencies (trust and interdependence) predict affiliation to the derived municipal control configurations.

The paper applies an exploratory cluster analysis based on survey data from 243 top-level managers of German MOCs. It then investigates the clustered municipal control configurations using binomial logistic regression.

The exploratory analysis reveals four municipal control configurations: (1) input-dominated control, (2) outcome-dominated control, (3) mixed input/outcome control and (4) “neglect of formal control”. As expected, both of the informal contingencies demonstrate strong predictive power. More precisely, trust increases the likelihood of belonging to the dominant outcome control cluster and interdependence increases the likelihood of belonging to the mixed input/outcome control cluster. Surprisingly, the neglect of formal control cluster is characterized by low trust and low interdependence.

The study sheds light on the widely assumed but understudied interplay of different formal controls in hybrid governance settings. Furthermore, the analysis stresses the importance of trust and interdependence when explaining hybrid control configurations.

This study aims to investigate the effects of project-level external knowledge search breadth and search depth on the innovation performance of open innovation (OI) projects in large firms; it further considers these effects mediated by two forms of control mechanisms (process and outcome control) when the level of project complexity and the two stages of a project – early (problem definition) and late (solution development) – are taken into account.

Based on a survey of 187 managers responsible for an OI project, the authors use theory on behavioral-based control mechanisms to explore whether the effect of external knowledge search breadth and depth on OI performance is contingent on having the right levels of control mechanisms in place.

The results showed that the control mechanism mediates the relationship between external knowledge search breadth and depth and OI project performance. Furthermore, project complexity is an important moderator of these effects, especially for outcome control.

A better OI project’s performance is not achieved by external knowledge search breadth and depth alone, but by building process and outcome control mechanism on it to balance knowledge sharing and protecting tension. Furthermore, Outcome control is only helpful with less complex OI projects.