Posted by Yogesh Malhotra on June 17, 1997 at 22:52:24:

In Reply to: Re: Is 'Knowledge Management' an Oxymoron?: 'Control', 'Compliance' & 'Performance' posted by don on June 17, 1997 at 21:28:55:

Don,

There is more to the notion of control in the management literature... beyond the cybernetic notion of 'controlling the outcome' that you mentioned. Generally organizational controls have been discussed in terms of 'external controls' - controls exerted by the organization on the employees so that they can do what the organization wants them to do. They may take the form of 'behavior controls' where the employees are judged based on their behavior, i.e., what they seem to be busy doing... or they may take the form of 'performance controls' where the employees are not judged based on 'what they are busy doing' but on the specific number of units they buy, sell, produce, etc., i.e., specifically in terms of 'outcomes.'

Ouchi had argued that in certain situations - such as Japanese companies - 'clan control' is what generally operates. This kind of control doesn't focus on monitoring behavior or outcomes. Rather, the various individuals share common values and their activities/outcomes are 'controlled' by their own value systems in absence of any explicit organizational controls. Ross Perot's original EDS was an example of 'clan control' in which most of the employees were ex-armymen with similar work ethic.

Some authors in this area have emphasized the notion of 'self-control' and 'self-regulation' suggesting that the most powerful control is not 'external' control but what the individual exerts on oneself. In fact, some have even suggested that the only kind of control that works is self-control since external controls are finally activated at the individual level in terms of whatever the specific individual makes of them.

Examples of such publications include:

Manz, C.C., Mossholder, K. W. & Luthans, F. "An Integrated Perspective of Self-Control in Organizations," 19(1), Administration & Society, May 1987, pp. 3-24.

Manz, C.C. & Sims, H.P. SuperLeadership: Leading Others to Lead Themselves, Prentice-Hall, Berkeley, CA, 1989.

A recent paper that had built on this stream of work was presented at the INFORMS '96 conference and published in the conference proceedings.

Malhotra, Y., & Kirsch, L. J. (1996). Personal Construct Analysis of Self-Control in IS Adoption: Empirical Evidence from Comparative Case Studies of IS Users & IS Champions. Proceedings of the First INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology, Washington D.C., May 5-8, 1996, 105-114.

This paper may be requested from malhotra@vms.cis.pitt.edu.

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Follow Ups:

• Re: Is 'Knowledge Management' an Oxymoron?: 'Control', 'Compliance' & 'Performance' Brenda Jamnik 07:34:58 11/12/97 (0)
• Japanese Management Process HARESH TILANI 22:51:50 10/27/97 (2)
  • Re: Japanese Management Process andy hayes 13:25:23 4/07/98 (1)
    • Re: Japanese Management Process Jum 12:56:06 11/26/98 (0)
• Re: Is 'Knowledge Management' an Oxymoron?: 'Control', 'Compliance' & 'Performance' Don Mezei 10:43:16 6/19/97 (1)
  • Re: Is 'Knowledge Management' an Oxymoron?: 'Control', 'Compliance' & 'Performance' Yogesh Malhotra 19:02:59 7/16/97 (0)

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