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This paper aims to consider the enabling and coercive features of formal control in non-hierarchical settings and the factors influencing perceptions of controls.

This paper is a qualitative case study of a single organization. Data are collected via semi-structured interviews, a range of published materials and a management presentation. Analysis considered the features of coercive and enabling control at the level of individual controls.

In this highly decentralized organization, internal and global transparency predominate and help managers respond to contingencies in flexible ways. Managers cannot repair certain elements of controls to ensure there is stability in an otherwise flexible system. The existence (absence) of enabling features combined with the type of controls (e.g. action or results controls) lacking enabling features influence managers’ perceptions of control.

Few studies have considered formal controls in non-hierarchical organizations. The findings reveal the importance of minimally coercive control features in creating a stable structure for controlling performance. The findings may not be relevant to other hierarchical organizations.

The study is conducted in a highly decentralized context where managers have extensive autonomy (flexibility). The context allows the role of minimally coercive control features to be explored in an essentially enabling organizational setting.

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and the norm of reciprocity, this paper examines the relationship between high-performance human resources practices (HPHRPs) and employee counterproductive work behavior (CWB), and whether HPHRP interact with coercive control systems to predict these outcomes.

Using meta-ethnographic data collected from 149 organizational ethnographies, the authors test the hypotheses that (a) HPHRP are negatively related to CWB and (b) HPHRP and coercive control interact such that the relationship between HPHRP and CWB is weaker when coercive control is high.

The analysis finds that HPHRP and coercive control interacted such that HPHRP was negatively associated with CWB, but only when coercive control was low. When coercive control was high, the relationship between HPHRP was negated.

The results suggest that HPHRP are negatively related to counterproductive behaviors; but when coercive control systems are strong, the potential benefits of HPHRP in terms of reducing CWB may be lost.

This study examines the relationship between HPHRP and a comprehensive set of CWB. By examining the interaction between HPHRP and coercive control, the authors add to literature demonstrating that the effects of HPHRP may be dependent on an organization’s operational strategy. Finally, our use of meta-ethnographic data offers a methodological approach that may increase the generalizability of our findings.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore aspects of both enabling and coercive control usages and to extend the literature stream by integrating relevant ethical variables at both the level of the individual and the group. We also provide multiple ideas for future research studies.

An overview of prior literature in management control systems is presented with an aim toward identifying gaps in research knowledge.

As a result of our investigation into the intersection between management control and ethics, it is evident that there are many future areas ripe for enquiry.

This study contributes theoretically by conceptualizing the integration of ethical considerations with how control systems are used, and then offering ideas for future research directions.

Our research investigates the intersection between management control and ethics. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to delve into this critical area.

Recent accounting research has connected the coercive and enabling types of formalisation (C/E) (Adler and Borys, 1996) with the distinction between diagnostic and interactive controls (D/I) proposed by Simons (1995, 2000) to tackle research questions on complex control situations involving both the degree of employee autonomy and patterns of management attention. The diverse conceptual approaches used for connecting C/E and D/I have led to fragmentation in the literature and raise concerns about their conceptual clarity. In this paper, we assess the conceptual clarity of various forms of connection between C/E and D/I. Firstly, we conduct an in-depth content analysis of 59 recent papers, and inductively identify three points of conceptual ambiguity and divergence in the literature (namely, the perspective from which a phenomenon is studied; whether categories capture choices driven by design or by style-of-use; and the properties of control systems). We also observe that the literature proposes various forms of connection (i.e. coexistence, inclusion, and combination approaches). Secondly, we use the three detected points of ambiguity and divergence as assessment criteria, and evaluate the extent to which conceptual clarity is at risk under each form of connection. Based on this assessment, we provide guidelines to enhance the conceptual clarity of the connections between C/E and D/I, propose several research models, and indicate opportunities for future research in this area.

As international retailers continue to employ franchising as a major method of market entry, the control of these international retail franchise networks becomes of significant importance. The aim of this paper is to examine the methods by which UK‐based international fashion franchisors control franchisees and their international franchise businesses.

The paper employs a qualitative methodology and a multiple case design. Six UK‐based fashion retailers with international franchise operations form the empirical basis of the study.

The franchise contract, support mechanisms, franchise partner selection, the franchise relationship and the use of master/area franchising were found to be the major methods by which international retail franchisors exert control over their franchise networks. While coercive and non‐coercive sources of power were identified in the form of the franchise contract and support mechanisms, the paper also identifies sources of relationship power and organisational power.

The paper provides practical information to existing international franchisors and those firms considering the move into the international marketplace via the franchise mode of operation. By highlighting additional sources of power in the form of organisational and relationship power, franchisors are offered further means by which to control their international businesses than hitherto identified in the international franchise literature.

Traditional franchise research suggests that there is a dichotomy in the sources of power available to franchisors, that is, coercive or non‐coercive sources of power. While acknowledging the existence and importance of these sources of power and their related methods of control, this paper adds further dimensions to the academic debate by introducing relationship power and organisational power. Therefore, franchise partner selection, the franchise relationship and the use of master/area franchising emerge from the qualitative findings as further control mechanisms available to international retail franchisors.

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.

Technology increasingly features in intimate relationships and is used by domestic violence perpetrators to enact harm. In this chapter, we propose a theoretical and practical framework for technology-facilitated harms in heterosexual relationships which we characterize as digital coercive control. Here, we include behaviors which can be classified as abuse and stalking and also individualized tactics which are less easy to categorize, but evoke fear and restrict the freedoms of a particular woman. Drawing on their knowledge of a victim/survivor's experiences and, in the context of patterns and dynamics of abuse, digital coercive control strategies are personalized by perpetrators and extend and exacerbate “real-world” violence.

Digital coercive control is unique because of its spacelessness and the ease, speed, and identity-shielding which technology affords. Victim/survivors describe how perpetrator use of technology creates a sense of omnipresence and omnipotence which can deter women from exiting violent relationships and weakens the (already tenuous) notion that abuse can be “escaped.” We contend that the ways that digital coercive control shifts temporal and geographic boundaries warrant attention. However, spatiality more broadly cannot be overlooked. The place and shape in which victim/survivors and perpetrators reside will shape both experiences of and response to violence. In this chapter, we explore these ideas, reporting on findings from a study on digital coercive control in regional, rural, and remote Australia. We adopt a feminist research methodology in regard to our ethos, research processes, analysis, and the outputs and outcomes of our project. Women's voices are foreground in this approach and the emphasis is on how research can be used to inform, guide, and develop responses to domestic violence.

The authors examined how squad members within an Australian state police force perceived and attached enabling or coercive meanings to a suite of management control system (MCS) changes that were new public management (NPM) inspired.

The authors conducted a longitudinal case study of a large Australian state police department utilizing an abductive research design.

The authors found that identification processes strongly conditioned the reception of the MCS changes introduced. Initially, the authors observed mixed interpretations of controls as both enabling and coercive. Over time, these changes were seen to be coercive because they threatened interpersonal relationships and the importance and efficacy of squads in combating serious and organized crime.

The authors contributed to MCSs literature by revealing the critical role that multifaceted relational and collective identification processes played in shaping interpretations of controls as enabling–coercive. The authors build on this to elaborate on the notion of employees’ centricity in the MCS design.

This study suggests that, in complex organizational settings, the MCS design and change should reckon with pre-existing patterns of employees’ identification.

The authors suggested shifting the starting point for contemplating the MCS change: from looking at how what employees do is controlled to how the change impacts and how employees feel about who they are. When applied to the MCS design, employee centricity highlights the value of collaborative co-design, attentiveness to relational identification between employees, feedback and interaction in place of inferred management expectations and traditional mechanistic approaches.

This paper applies organizational development (OD) process‐cultural and structural change strategies to synthesize Etzioni's three approaches to power and compliance: normative, coercive and remunerative to study the management control systems of teams in organizations.

The paper uses library‐archives research.

OD's process and structural differences have affected team members' commitment and operating performance in these three control systems. Advances in information technology have introduced new forms of normative: surveillance control.

If MCS are viewed as adaptive systems, the design and implementation of MCS center on identifying those contingent OD process and structural conditions that support team management in these three control systems.

The management control literature has not applied Etzioni's basis of power and compliance typologies to study the administrative control of teams. This paper fills this research gap by synthesizing and integrating the OD and MCS literature.