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Senior managers seek to align managerial endeavors with the organization’s objectives. Traditionally, alignment has focused on monitoring and rewarding the achievement of assigned targets. However, there is evidence to suggest that organizations may also seek to align managerial “values” with those of the organization. These attempts to influence managerial mindsets through management control systems raise non-trivial questions regarding the systems involved, the reasons behind them, and the possible consequences of such attempts. These questions form the basis of this research, and this chapter reports on two case studies of Mexican organizations that claim to have a values-based philosophy. This study contributes to the management literature by presenting empirical evidence related to certain philosophical ideas on the development of human potential and senior managers’ attempts to influence their employees’ will. In detailing the implementation process of two specific value systems, this chapter fills a gap identified in the management control literature.

This paper seeks to address the question: what is the relationship of culture to self‐leadership?

In an exploratory study, 74 US and 44 Chinese undergraduates rated their cultural beliefs and self‐leadership strategies. After four‐weeks in which a self‐leadership intervention was utilized, respondents contrasted positive aspects of their professional objectives with obstacles that impeded the realization of their goals.

The intervention did not influence participants' self‐leadership strategies, as measured two weeks after the intervention (p > 0.11). Repeated MANOVA measures revealed that the US group expressed higher levels of self‐leadership than the Chinese group during the three phases of the study (p < 0.001). Surprisingly, Chinese students held higher individualistic characteristics than the US group (p=0.009).

This research provides some insight into the similarities and differences between people from different cultures as to their use of self‐leadership strategies. Further research using more robust validation methodology is warranted to confirm the measurements of the study at issue here.

Managers will benefit from becoming aware that individuals' cultural characteristics influence their use and development of self‐leadership strategies.

This study makes a significant contribution to the body of research on self‐leadership. The study provides what may be the first glimpse of the volitional and self‐awareness components of self‐leadership strategies within the native Chinese population, and provides a backdrop with a US population for contrast.

Whilst industry is required to adhere to the letter of the law in terms of the installation of adequate fire protection equipment, it is not reasonable to expect that their own volition busy managers will often probe further into other aspects of fire safety. “But we believe that by using legislation as a foundation, the Fire Extinguishing Trades Assocation (FETA) through its Listing and Labelling Scheme, can help end users build up a secure fire protection capability by obtaining the right extinguishers for the right risks, siting them in the right place — and making sure that they are in perfect working order”. That is how FETA's Vice‐Chairman, Peter Carne, who is also Chairman of the Listing Committee, established a year ago by FETA — explains the philosophy underlying the FETA Listing and Labelling Scheme.

The purpose of this study is to extend sales control research to inside sales. Aside from a few notable exceptions (Conde et al., 2022) much of the sales control literature has focused on a single control mechanism rather than a sales control portfolio perspective. The authors add multiple layers to Conde et al. (2022) by capturing secondary operational data and manager interviews to access sales control theory in practice.

With operational data from a Fortune 100 financial services company and sales manager interviews, the authors present evidence that managers apply a portfolio of controls to ensure sales agents’ overall performance.

Findings support that cultural controls have a greater influence on overall performance than a focus solely on process and outcome controls. Inside sales managers can generate better results when they focus on creating an employee-centric culture rather than controlling sales agents with formal sales controls.

This study extends sales control research by examining inside sales managers’ formal and informal sales controls. Historically, inside sales had sales leaders balance a myriad of sales controls grounded in strict oversight. With a few notable exceptions, the limited inside sales control research provides the opportunity to display an inside sales manager’s need to jointly focus on operational results and sales outcomes, illustrating the importance of cultural controls compared to other sales process and outcome controls. This research considerably extends sales controls research by focusing on inside sales.

Political behaviour and the games played within organisational structures are devastating to its resources. Politics emerges as a result of executive management′s lack of decisiveness and control in the execution of the basic management functions of planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling the organisation′s resources. Organisations with no policies or policies with no enforcement are a haven for political participants who put the organisations′ resources at risk. In this context political emergence, its consequences, and how politics may be kept to a negligible level are explored.

This paper aims to capture the effects of access to information and deadlines on empowerment and subordinate managers’ effectiveness. The purpose is to contribute to the growing empowerment-related discourse within the management control discipline.

To test the hypotheses derived from empowerment theory, this paper collects survey data from 103 middle-level managers. Using a path model that describes all the potential theoretical relations, this study tests the survey data using a boot-strapped linear regression approach.

This study finds evidence for both direct and indirect positive effects between access to information and subordinate managers’ performance, which supports the view that empowerment has a partial mediating effect on performance. The study also finds that though the effect of access to information on empowerment is not moderated by the specification of deadlines, empowerment is negatively affected when priorities change with new deadlines.

This study offers two new insights as follows: First, in addressing the concern relating to the lack of clarity in the extant literature on the role of empowerment, this study finds that empowerment partially mediates the relation between access to information and performance. Second, the study finds that time-based performance targets per se do not affect empowerment as much as the task uncertainty, which arises with frequent changes to such a target.

This paper aims to apply concepts from “flow” paradigm to examine factors contributing to participation in entertainment and shopping activities at, and future patronage intent toward, entertainment shopping malls.

Data were collected from 342 consumers via mall intercepts conducted at two major entertainment shopping malls located in major metropolitan areas in the US states of Arizona and California. A self‐administered questionnaire was provided to subjects to complete while shopping at the mall. Data analysis was conducted using standard error of mean.

Supporting flow theory, results suggest that future mall patronage intention is most directly influenced by participation in mall entertainment activities followed by shopping activities. Entertainment and shopping participation are indirectly and positively influenced by patrons' intrinsic motivations, freedom of choice to patronize the mall, and perceptions of challenges and skills in participating in mall activities through their effects on mood states.

Results demonstrated that mall patrons do experience “flow‐like” mood states which influence activity levels in pursuing both mall entertainment and shopping. A study limitation included the focus on one mood state which pointed toward a need to investigate other mood states of mall shoppers.

This paper examines four antecedents, derived from flow theory, that may influence entertainment mall patrons' flow‐type mood states which, in turn, may drive their participation in mall shopping and entertainment activities.

The purpose of this paper is to seek a better understanding of the role of volition in the learning transfer system beyond the well-established concept of motivation to transfer.

Participants of a two-day leadership training were asked to complete two online questionnaires (t₁ directly after training, t₂ eight weeks after training). In total, 891 managers answered the first questionnaire, 465 the second.

Confirmatory factor analysis suggests that motivation and volition to transfer are perceived as two different constructs. Hierarchical linear regression shows that additional variance in training transfer can be explained when volition to transfer is taken into account. Structural equation models and bootstrap analysis suggest that both motivation and volition to transfer mediate effects of supervisor support and trainer performance on training transfer.

The results imply that besides motivation to transfer, volition to transfer may be a relevant construct in the transfer of training. It remains to be tested how far these findings can be generalized to other training settings beside leadership trainings.

Organizations aiming at improving training transfer should focus on enhancing the participants’ motivation and volition to transfer. Both trainers and supervisors seem to promote transfer of training by influencing a trainee’s motivation to transfer and volition to transfer.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically examine the role of volition in training transfer.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, theoretically and empirically, whether an employee training program can enhance the collective perception of empowerment of work units within an organization. The authors hypothesized that training participation relates to empowerment by enhancing the potency, meaningfulness, impact, and autonomy of the employees.

The authors collected data at two time points, before and after the training intervention. Over the two periods, the sample consisted of an average of 2,383 employees nested in 36 work units of a large multinational company.

The results indicated a positive relationship between training participation and increased levels of collective psychological empowerment, with differential effects on the dimensions of empowerment.

This study provides evidence of the positive relationship between training and empowerment, suggesting training effects across levels of analysis. The results indicated dimensions of empowerment that are more and such that are less prone to training. Such knowledge may help to inform organizations in developing training strategies. The authors provide recommendations for a respective training program.

This is one of the first studies to investigate the relationship between training participation of individual employees and shared empowerment perceptions within their work units, adding an important antecedent to the research on empowerment. In addition, the authors propose ways of how individual employees can affect shared perceptions among work-unit members. The study offers insights into the development of empowered work units, the vertical transfer of training across levels of analysis and implications for training programs.