ENABLING AND COERCIVE CONTROL AT CONFLICT? THE SIMULTANEOUS
PURSUIT FOR MOVATION AND COMPLIANCE
Abstract:
In nearly every organization, management control systems are in place to align individuals’ behavior with organizational objectives. Essentially, this is done through either enabling and motivating employees to put in effort, or coercively ‘forcing’ them to comply to rules and procedures. Extant research mainly focused on the enabling purpose, resulting in little understanding of how enabling and coercively designed control mechanisms dualistically influence the need for both motivation and compliance. To fill this research gap, I conducted a case study towards the various control mechanisms of a PMS at a global home- and furnishing retailer. I found that (1) the effects of enabling and coercive control mechanisms on motivation and compliance moderate each other, (2) a control mechanism can dynamically change from enabling to coercive and vice versa, (3) and that control exercised by a superior can be rather different from how that control is perceived by a subordinate. My study suggests that managers need to carefully balance between positively motivating their employees, and ‘forcing’ them to comply through the use of a PMS.
Key words: Management Control System, Performance Measurement System, Enabling and Coercive Control, Agency Theory
University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business
Thesis for MSc BA: Organizational & Management Control
Author: Peter Everloo Student number: s2812797 Supervisor: Dr. W. Kaufmann Co-assessor: Dr. H.J. van Elten
Date: 20 June 2016
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1. INTRODUCTION
Many contemporary organizations are searching for ways to align organizational objectives with individuals’ behavior, defined as goal congruence (Cugueró-Escofet & Rosanas, 2013), to create commitment and compliance of individuals to the organization. In organizational and accounting literature, this issue has commonly been addressed through the study of management control systems (MCSs) (see Seal et al., 2004; Berry et al., 2009; Free, 2007). How a MCS is designed to create goal congruence largely depends on how it is intended to be used by top-management. Does it serve the need to facilitate and motivate employees in their work? Or does it serve the need for top-management to let them adhere to certain rules and procedures without much space to deviate from this?
A concept that delves deeper into these different types of purpose and design of MCSs is the concept of enabling and coercive management control styles. An enabling control style leverages skills and competences of individuals and is characterized by facilitating and motivating them to better do their work, while a coercive control style seeks to ‘force’ compliance to rules, guidelines and procedures and is said to demotivate and restrict individuals (Free, 2007). The main implied message in the enabling and coercive control literature is that motivated and facilitated employees are more committed to an organization than ones who are not. It is therefore no surprise that studying enabling control is the dominant approach taken by authors in this field (Ahrens & Chapman, 2004; Chapman & Kihn, 2009; Jordan & Messner, 2012; Wouters & Wilderom, 2008; Wouters & Roijmans, 2011; Cuganesan et al., 2014; Busco & Quattrone, 2015).
But what if organizations need to motivate and ‘force’ compliance simultaneously to achieve goal congruence? From an agency perspective, individuals are often self-interested and are trying to maximize personal utility instead of organizational utility, especially when they are being poorly monitored (Ekanayake, 2004). Enabling control mechanisms are concerned with attempts to mobilize local knowledge and experience in support of central objectives, and can let individuals forgo the pursuit for self-interest and show behavior in favor of organizational utility instead (Free, 2007). However, as Ekanayake (2004) argues, by enabling employees with too much information, autonomy and specialized knowledge, agency problems (e.g. monitoring problem and moral hazard) are more likely to occur. This implies that some form of monitoring and guidance is needed. For that reason, a performance measurement system (PMS) is often in place.
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Busco & Quattrone, 2015). These functions are interrelated and according to Henri (2006), they should be balanced. Although they are theoretically well understood separately, the dualistic nature remains an important field for future research (Wouters & Wilderom, 2008).
Despite that a PMS can be used to control for and prevent agency problems (i.e. monitoring problem) of occurring, employees could perceive several control mechanisms of the PMS as a coercive tool for top-management to control their behavior. Coercively perceived controls, in turn, demotivate and restrict, rather than facilitate, and reduce an employee’s desire to comply (Sundaramurthy & Lewis, 2003). This paradox raises the question of how an organization can prevent agency problems of occurring, by balancing between motivating and ‘forcing’ compliance through enabling and coercive control mechanisms, respectively. Although the literature is clear in favoring enabling over coercive control, it is rather unclear to what extent both forms can be used jointly, and how this duality influences motivation and compliance of individuals. Within the field of enabling and coercive control, this area has been given far less attention.
The goal of this study is thus to understand the effects of the duality between enabling and coercive control mechanisms regarding PMS on motivation and compliance of individuals, formalized by the following research question: how does the simultaneous existence of both enabling and coercive control mechanisms of a PMS dualistically influence motivation and compliance of individuals? To increase our understanding about this duality, a case study approach is used, for which the following sub-questions help answering the research question:
(1) What purpose do various control mechanisms of the PMS serve for the organization?
(2) Which control mechanisms are characterized by an enabling or coercive control style, respectively?
(3) How do enabling and coercive control mechanisms influence each other?
The context chosen for this study is one in which both coercive and enabling control mechanisms are likely to be found, and in which a PMS plays a significant role. The case organization that fits these criteria is a global home and furnishing company, part of a franchise with a standardized business format to which every franchisee has to comply. This could imply a need for a coercive type of control. Within this standardized format, there exists some degree of flexibility and empowerment to make decisions, which could imply a need for an enabling type of control. To gather data, interviews were conducted at three hierarchical levels and in addition, documents about the PMS were gathered and analyzed.
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perceived control. By doing so, I contribute to the call of Jorgenson & Messner (2010) to better understand the dualistic nature of PMSs, and the call of Heumann et al. (2015) to gain a better understanding of management control through the perspective of different hierarchical stakeholders.
The remainder of this thesis is structured as follows: section 2 provides a conceptual framework in which prior research on management control, PMSs, agency theory, and enabling/coercive control is discussed. Subsequently, in section 3 the research methodology is described of which the findings are presented in section 4. I will conclude by discussing the main findings and implications in section 5, and provide some avenues for future research.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
In this section, I will first discuss the challenges of alignment of individual behavior with organizational objectives as part of management control. I will draw on agency theory to help us better understand how these challenges relate to a certain use of a PMS. Organizations can use a PMS to strive for motivation of employees but the purpose might also be to ‘force’ compliance. The concept of enabling and coercive control provides a good framework to assess how its use influences motivation and compliance of employees. This will be discussed hereafter.
2.1 Management Control
Achieving organizational objectives is characteristic for well-performing organizations (Burney et al., 2009). For this purpose, many contemporary organizations are searching for ways to align organizational goals with individual goals to create commitment and compliance of individuals to the organization. For decades, academics have studied this extensively through the lens of management control (MC), broadly defined as “any attempt to align individuals’ behavior with organizational objectives” (Heumann et al., 2015, p. 337). More specifically, in organizational and accounting literature, a common way to align individual and organizational goals is to influence employees’ behavior and actions by using management control systems (MCSs) (Seal et al., 2004; Berry et al., 2009; Free, 2007).
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devices and systems managers use to ensure that the behaviours and decisions of their employees are consistent with the organization’s objectives and strategies” (p. 290). Organizations are dependent on people within the firm who could show dysfunctional behavior. Through MCSs organizations can guard against the possibility of this behavior to unfold (Merchant & Van der Stede, 2007). The underlying reasoning of this behavioral perspective of MCS is based on the assumption that a superior (i.e. controller) is seeking to control the behavior of a subordinate (i.e. controlee) (Malmi & Brown, 2008). The assumption of individuals showing dysfunctional behavior that needs to be controlled for can be explained through the lens of agency theory.
2.2 Agency Theory
Agency theory is widely discussed for the past decades and builds on the notion that individuals are self-interested and will show behavior that maximizes their personal utility instead of organizational utility (Ekanayake, 2004). Although this is obviously not generalizable to all individuals, it is however the premise of agency theory which tries to resolve agency problems arisen from the delegation of decisions from one party to another (Ekanayake, 2004).
For one, it attempts to resolve the problem of monitoring individuals, which arises because the principle cannot perfectly verify whether the agent has behaved appropriately. Related to this is the problem of moral hazard, where individuals attempt to exert less effort, especially when they are being poorly monitored (Ekanayake, 2004). In addition, ‘the possibility that people will do something the organization does not want them to do or fail to do something they should do (Merchant & Van der Stede, 2007)’, can be explained by conflicts of interest, where superiors and subordinates have different needs. Conflicts of interest happen at multiple hierarchical levels, and are likely to be found in nearly every superior-subordinate relationship, such as employer-employee, and manager-worker relationships (Eisenhardt, 1988; Gomez-Mejia and Balkin, 1992; Ekanayake, 2004).
To deal with agency problems and ensure goal congruence, a performance measurement system (PMS) is often crucial. Foremost, because it addresses the main agency problem of monitoring individuals by measuring performance on which an individual is being monitored, evaluated and reported (Nudurupati et al., 2011).
2.3 Performance Measurement System
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(2004); monitoring, attention focusing, strategic decision making and legitimization (Henri, 2006); measuring performance, influence behavior, strategy management, learning & improvement and communication (Franco-Santos et al., 2007); operational-, incentive-, and exploratory use (Speklé & Verbeeten, 2014).
From a control style perspective, it makes sense to bring structure to this inconsistency by categorizing the variety of PMS functions based on control purpose. Agency theory informs us that there are different hierarchical stakeholders within an organization for which a PMS serves different purposes (Ekanayake, 2004). We can make a distinction between a PMS being a control device for top-management and a PMS being a tool to support lower-level managers and employees in their work.
For top-management a PMS can be used for steering and guidance through formation of strategy and objectives, translating these to more specific objectives and measures, and communicating these to different units within the organization and guide employees to do their work. Top-management has certain expectations of the employees and a PMS used for steering and guidance can focus the employees on specific results and make them work harder and put in more effort (Simons, 1995; Wouters, 2009). To control for monitoring problems, a PMS is used to monitor and evaluate employees on their performance, similar to the monitoring and performance evaluation functions of Henri (2006) and Hansen & Van der Stede (2004), respectively. Besides being a tool for top-management, a PMS also serves the interests of subordinates whose performance is being measured (Busco et al., 2015). To support lower-level managers and employees in their work, a PMS can be used to provide information for decision making and to facilitate and motivate them to do their work more effectively (Wouters & Wilderom, 2008; Busco & Quattrone, 2015).
Although the various functions of a PMS are theoretically well understood separately, the dualistic nature remains an important field for future research (Wouters & Wilderom, 2008). Henri (2006) adds that the various functions of a PMS are interrelated and should be balanced. How they are balanced, largely depends on how a PMS is intended to be used by the organization (Wouters & Wilderom, 2008). Does it serve the need to motivate and facilitate employees in their work? Or does it serve the need to force compliance? A concept that helps us to delve deeper into different types of purpose and design of control mechanisms is the concept of enabling and coercive control.
2.4 Enabling and Coercive Types of Control
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characterized by knowledge sharing and the leveraging of skills and competences (Dowling & Leech, 2014) through task mastery, intergroup participation, interactive dialogues, trust, and learning from mistakes (Free, 2007). Essentially, an enabling use of control mobilizes instead of replaces and restricts individuals intelligence (Wouters & Wilderom, 2008). Enabling control, thus relates to facilitating and motivating employees and is rather bottom-up approached. Coercive control on the other hand is characterized by rules and procedures that constrain and punish rather than promote and support productive practices (Free, 2007) and seeks to force compliance through a top-down approach (Jorgenson & Messner, 2010).
Whether a control mechanism is either enabling or coercive depends on the perception of individuals towards it. Therefore a distinction can be made between how a superior exercises control and how this is perceived by a subordinate (Ouchi, 1978; Heumann et al., 2015). To determine how control is perceived and exercised, we can use a framework originally developed by Adler & Borys (1996) that differentiates between enabling and coercive formal systems on three dimensions: (1) characteristics of the system, (2) the design process, and (3) the implementation of the system (Adler & Borys, 1996; Ahrens & Chapman, 2004). Since Adler & Borys only offered a theoretical justification for why these dimensions are related to an enabling or coercive use of formalization, which is only one form of control and defined as the extent of written rules, procedures, and instructions (Adler & Borys, 1996), Ahrens & Chapman (2004) translated these dimensions to the more complex context of MCSs, bound up with issues of hierarchy and performance evaluation. To assess if control mechanisms are characterized as either enabling or coercive, the adjusted framework of Ahrens & Chapman (2004) provides a useful construct, which will be discussed in more detail next.
2.4.1 Classification framework of enabling and coercive control. According to Ahrens & Chapman (2004), control mechanism can be assessed on four integrated design principles (i.e. characteristics): repair, internal transparency, global transparency and flexibility. Repair refers to the breakdown of control processes, providing capabilities for fixing them (Chapman & Kihn, 2009). An example of repair is provided by the study of Heumann et al. (2015), where repair referred to as regular feedback loops regarding a project plan. The ability to repair facilitates and motivates employees by involving them and allowing them to provide input in adjusting practices, while the inability to repair restricts employees in doing so and relates to forcing compliance.
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put in effort more effectively, and by doing so increasing motivation. A lack of internal transparency reduces the employees’ understanding of their efforts and is more related to ‘doing what is told’.
Global transparency is concerned with the visibility of the overall context in which individuals perform their specific duties, and that individuals understand what implications arise at other parts of the organization. Budgets are an example of a control mechanism for making processes globally transparent. Increasing global transparency facilitates employees as it allows them to understand the consequences of their efforts for other parts of the organization. It motivates as employees are more involved in the organization. A lack of global transparency limits employees’ understanding to their own work or department, reducing cohesion in the organization.
Flexibility refers to the organizational members’ discretion over the use of control systems. In other words the extent that they can turn the control processes off (Chapman & Kihn, 2009). It is about the degree to which individuals have to comply with certain procedures and rules related to the control mechanism. An example is deviation from a predefined plan of action. Being flexible facilitates employees by having responsibilities to make situational dependent decisions, while inflexible designs cause employees to comply to predefined actions.
In relation to a PMS, control mechanisms do not have to be enabling or coercive on all design characteristics. According to Groen et al. (2012), a PMS can create an understanding for employees about how their tasks fit into the larger picture, but it does not necessarily have to allow employees to modify the system themselves and to repair the system whenever that is needed, implying that a control system can have both enabling and coercive effects. Adler & Borys (1996) call for a deeper understanding of individual differences and variability in how the four design characteristics of their framework are perceived.
While Ahrens & Chapman were mainly interested in the design characteristics of a MCS, Wouters & Wilderom (2008) emphasize that enabling and coercive control mechanisms differ on the design and implementation process of a control system as well. Several studies inform us that user involvement in designing and implementing a control system increases the likelihood of positive and enabling perceptions of the control system by organizational members (Ahrens & Chapman, 2004; Busco & Quattrone, 2015; Jordan & Messner, 2012; Wouters & Wilderom, 2008). This is because employee involvement in the development process provides individuals a better understanding of the control mechanism by making the system more transparent to them (Groen et al., 2012).
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literature is that motivated and facilitated employees are more committed to an organization than ones who are not. In this sense enabling control provides a good construct to motivate and commit individuals to organizational objectives. However, scarcely studied is the existence of both enabling and coercive control mechanisms within an organization.
2.4.2 Duality of enabling and coercive control mechanisms. Relating back to earlier this section, what if organizations need both compliance and motivation of their employees? From an agency perspective, individuals are often self-interested and are trying to maximize personal utility instead of organizational utility, especially when they are being poorly monitored (Ekanayake, 2004). Enabling control mechanisms are concerned with attempts to mobilize local knowledge and experience in support of central objectives (i.e. organizational utility)(Free, 2007). Through an enabling control style, organizations can let individuals forgo the pursuit for self-interest and show behavior in favor of organizational utility instead. However, as Ekanayake (2004) argues, by facilitating employees with too much information, autonomy and specialized knowledge, agency problems, such as moral hazard are more likely to occur. Through a PMS, agency problems can be addressed by monitoring individuals on their performance (Ekanayake, 2004), in which the PMS is used as a control tool for top-management, which individuals could perceive as rather coercive. According to Sundaramurthy & Lewis (2003), coercively perceived controls, in turn, reduce the agent’s desire to comply, which is not desired as well. This paradox raises the question of how an organization can prevent agency problems of occurring, by balancing between motivating and ‘forcing’ compliance through enabling and coercive control styles, respectively. From an agency point of view, I thus argue that compliance to rules and procedures, and the monitoring of this, is in some cases just as desired as motivation and facilitation.
The view of balancing between enabling and coercive control mechanisms is supported by several studies. In the field of enabling and coercive control, Stansbury & Barry (2007) argue that enabling and coercive control should be viewed on a continuum rather than as a dichotomy, implying that control is not simply perceived as either one or the other. A recent study, and to the best of my knowledge the only study, that explicitly identified the existence of both enabling and coercive control is conducted by Heumann et al. (2015). The authors conclude that the existence of coercive/enabling control styles is dependent on contextual factors prevalent on different hierarchical levels. In their study, control at the ‘team members – team leader’ relationship was found to be coercive, while control at the ‘team leader – senior manager’ relationship was perceived as enabling. Accordingly, the authors call for more research about different types of control in hierarchical relationships.
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Gomez-Mejia and Balkin, 1992; Ekanayake, 2004), possibly creating the need for different (enabling/coercive) types of control to be exercised. Sundaramurthy & Lewis (2003) used agency theory to study the paradox of control and collaboration, which can be reconciled with coercive and enabling control, respectively. They argue that neither control nor collaboration should be overemphasized, rather it is an interplay between both aspects. They call for more research about this interplay.
More generally from the field of management control, Brown & Eisenhardt (1997) and Chenhall (2003) argue that a MCS is usually characterized by both mechanistic and organic properties, implying that neither one should be overemphasized. Even though these authors did not study enabling and coercive control styles explicitly, their findings can be reconciled with these control styles. As Chenhall (2003) states: “Mechanistic controls rely on formal rules, standardized operating procedures and routines. Organic systems are more flexible, responsive, involve fewer rules and standardized procedures.” (p. 131). Mechanistic and organic characteristics thus relate to a coercive and enabling control style, respectively. The underlying message of both studies is that contemporary organizations do not use enabling and coercive control styles mutually exclusively. Rather they need to be balanced.
So although studies about enabling control are clearly favored over coercive control in the respective field, there are several studies that suggest to balance between enabling and coercive control mechanisms.
To summarize this section, I build my research on the enabling and coercive control framework of Ahrens & Chapman (2004) to assess how control mechanisms of a PMS are exercised and perceived by individuals in an organization. For this I will distinguish between three PMS’ functions (i.e. steering and guidance; monitoring and evaluation; and provision of information for decision making). I use insights from agency theory (a) to make a distinction between top-management, middle-management and lower-level employees’ needs and interests; (b) to argue that overemphasis on either enabling or coercive control can result in agency problems (e.g. monitoring problem and moral hazard), implying a need for a balance between both control styles; and (c) to address the consequences of the duality of enabling and coercive control styles on motivation and compliance. In the next section, I will provide a detailed description of the research methodology and incorporate the abovementioned aspects into the research design.
3. METHODOLOGY
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constructionist view of reality, which “stresses on the value-laden nature of inquiry and emphasis on questions of how social experiences are created and given meaning.” (Sarma, 2015, p. 181). For understanding how individuals exercise and perceive control mechanisms, it is imperative to understand complexities of multiple realities entangled in the perception and meaning-making process of the individual (Sarma, 2015).
This study draws on interpretive research, where the direction of the explanation is not predefined at the beginning of the research process, allowing to create understanding drawn primarily from the frame of reference of those being studied (Hopper and Powell, 1985). Through this qualitative approach, this study is designed to refine and extend the knowledge about enabling and coercive MC. According to Aken et al. (2012), this approach is best suited for gaining deeper understandings about constructs and phenomena. More specifically, I will conduct a case study, which is an appropriate method for answering a “how” question. Not only does it allow me to gain new insights from a relevant context, it also makes it possible to use different methods to gather information (Yin, 1989; Scapens, 1990; Pratt, 2009).
3.1 Research Site Selection
The case organization chosen for this study is based on two criteria: theoretical fit and convenient access to data. The latter is due to the relative short period of time in which data could be gathered, and was realized by me, as a researcher, being employed within the case organization. The former upholds an organization in which both coercive and enabling perceptions of control are likely to be found; where compliance to certain rules and standards is required; with a clear functional hierarchy; and in which a PMS plays a significant role. This theoretical sampling is suitable and preferred over random sampling because the process of interest is transparently observable, and therefore emergent theory of enabling and coercive management control can be extended (Eisenhardt, 1989).
For this purpose, the case organization is a store of a global home and furnishing franchise retailer with a clear global positioning of all the stores in the world and with a strong focus on both customer experience and efficiency objectives. To reach these objectives, a PMS plays a central role by measuring performance at a high level of detail which is used for decision making, benchmarking, monitoring, evaluating and guiding the organization towards achieving its goals, which is consistent with the three main functions of a PMS (Choong, 2014; Taticchi et al., 2010; Nudurupati et al., 2011; Wouters & Wilderom, 2008; Busco & Quattrone, 2015).
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globally in rather the same way for all franchisees, meaning that each franchisee has to conform to a standardized business format, with certain rules, routines and procedures in place on which members of the organization have to comply. This could imply a need for a coercive type of control to “force” compliance by management and employees to certain common procedures and standards. Within this standardized format, there exists some degree of flexibility and empowerment to make decisions, which could imply a need for an enabling type of control.
3.2 Data Collection and Analysis
I collected data from the case organization during a five-month period through two main instruments, namely: semi-structured interviews and archival data. Consistent with best practices of case studies, using multiple sources of data increases dependability and construct validity of the study (Sarma, 2015; Eisenhardt, 1989; Aken et al., 2012). To ensure credibility, the instruments were discussed with and evaluated by the thesis supervisor. For ethical considerations, all sources of data were gathered with informed consent, and access to formal documents which could be used for this research was provided by the case organization. For confidentiality reasons, actual performance numbers were not asked for during the interviews and will thus not be presented in the results section or appendices. Also, the case organization requested to stay anonymous, and I will therefore refer to ‘ORGZ’ when talking about the organization in the remainder of this paper. As a start-off, a meeting was held with the logistics manager who walked me through the process of performance measurement within the organization; what performance is measured; and how performance plays a role in this process.
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Interview data collection. The interviews were semi-structured, implying some form of structure as guidance but providing enough flexibility for questioning unforeseen aspects mentioned by the respondents. Semi-structured interviews increase construct validity, defined as the extent to which a measuring instrument measures what is intended to measure, as different questions about different aspects were asked (Aken et al., 2012). For the interviews, I specified some base questions as guidance in advance, related to the following themes: design characteristics of the PMS (repair, internal transparency, global transparency, flexibility); development process of the PMS; perceptions and use of the PMS; and agency problems. The questions can be found in Appendix B. The themes and base questions were constructed after an extensive review of the literature and after the initial walkthrough of the PMS at the case company.
If a respondent mentioned something interesting, which was not anticipated, this served as input for upcoming interviews. This allowed the informants to confirm insights and information which was already found (Blumberg et al., 2011). It also allowed me to take advantage of special opportunities to gain deeper insight about certain phenomena, implying that not the same aspects were exactly discussed throughout all interviews consistently. This overlapping of data-analysis and data-collection, and making additional adjustments to the interview protocol fits well with best practices in case study research (Eisenhardt, 1989).
Beforehand, interviewees were asked if the interview could be tape-recorded. The advantage of recording the interview is that I could concentrate on the conversation. It also made it possible to listen the interviews back and analyze them more systematically, which makes the research more reliable and credible. For confidentiality reasons, the names of the respondents are not mentioned. To reduce circumstance bias, defined as potential differences between circumstances under which a measurement is executed (Aken et al., 2012), the interviews were held individually and behind closed doors.
Interview data analysis. In refining the theory about enabling and coercive control, and to decrease research dependency and increase credibility, I used an iterative and systematical analysis process to compare the emergent frame with the evidence from the case study. A close fit is important in developing good theory because it takes advantage of the new insights possible from the data and yields an empirically valid theory (Eisenhardt, 1989). During the data-collection, the data and results were compared to related emerging concepts and theories within the strand of literature about enabling and coercive MC. By constantly matching theory and literature with the data, through a flexible research design (i.e. adjustments to the interview protocol), this iterative approach increases the credibility of my case study research.
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of constantly evaluating the data with relevant extant literature. First, I searched for comments about control mechanisms in play that are related to a certain use of the PMS at the organization. Subsequently, I searched for comments about perceptions of control that could characterize these control mechanisms as either enabling and/or coercive. Then I filtered the identified comments into different categories. For this, I adopted a similar coding technique of Heumann et al. (2015), where control is characterized by the controller, the controlee, an example quote, the control mechanism, the control feature (Ahrens & Chapman, 2004), and the control style. In addition to their model, I also specified to what PMS function the control mechanism relates and whether the control mechanism serves a purpose of motivating and-/or compliance (see Appendix C).
For the interviews, I coded and analyzed each interview separately. Hereafter, I compared the interview data at each stakeholder group, and subsequently between stakeholder groups. I analyzed this by looking for discrepancies and similarities in how a superior exercised control and how this was perceived by the subordinate. Ouchi (1978) and Heumann et al. (2015) made similar distinctions between given and received control, and exercised and recognized control, respectively. Analyzing both sides of the control spectrum allowed me to make valid and well-substantiated conclusions.
3.2.2 Archival data. In addition to interviews, archival data, and document analysis was used to gather information about the PMS in use. For each PMS’ main function, relevant documents were analyzed on the insight they provided for certain control mechanisms in play. The first step was to gather and analyze relevant documents in advance of conducting the interviews, whereas interviewees could consequently provide additional insight in relation to these documents. In addition, some relevant documents were mentioned by interviewees during the interviews, which were gathered and analyzed afterwards.
The second step was to analyze all gathered documents in conjunction with data from the interviews. To classify a control mechanism, identified through the analysis of the formal documents, as either enabling or coercive, the perceptions of interviewees were matched with the respective documents. For example, the performance dashboard consists of an excel sheet that provides insight into the very detailed level of performance measurement, which is a control mechanism at play. Based on the interviews, this control mechanisms facilitates and enables MT and Team Managers in decision making. In Appendix D, a table is provided with all documents gathered, their relevance, the control mechanism they relate to, and whether this control mechanism is characterized as either enabling and-/or coercive.
3.3 Identification of Enabling and Coercive Control Mechanisms
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characterized by an enabling and coercive control style, respectively? and (3) how do enabling and coercive control mechanisms influence each other? Overall, through document analysis and (inductive and deductive) qualitative coding of interview data, the analysis process resulted in the identification of three enabling control mechanisms through which the PMS seeks to motivate and facilitate employees and three coercive control mechanisms to force employees to comply.
For motivational purposes, (1) performance is measured to facilitate employees with relevant information for decision making; (2) employees are actively involved in business planning to determine how to achieve targets; and (3) through empowerment, employees at all levels are granted responsibilities to have an influence at achieving performance targets. For compliance purposes, the organization (a) uses standardized tasks, procedures and routines; (b) uses top-down strategizing to set targets and determine organizational focus; and (c) monitors and evaluates employees on performance measures.
In order to gain insight into the duality between coercive and enabling control, both type of control mechanisms were analyzed on substitutional and complementary effects, similar to the approach of Friis et al. (2015). This resulted in the following three sets of dualistic control mechanisms:
(1) top-down strategizing versus user involvement in business planning; (2) facilitating decision making versus monitoring and evaluating; (3) empowerment versus standardization.
By distinguishing between these categories of control mechanisms, the duality between enabling and coercive control of a PMS can be understood as well as the respective influence on motivation and compliance, which will be discussed next.
4. RESULTS
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4.1 Top-Down Strategizing versus User Involvement in Business Planning
One of the main functions of a PMS is to steer and guide the organization in a certain direction (Simons, 1995; Wouters, 2009). At ORGZ this translates to two control mechanisms: (1) top-down strategizing to set targets and determine organizational focus, and (2) user involvement in business planning to achieve these targets, which are characterized as coercive and enabling, respectively.
4.1.1 Top-down strategizing. Through a balanced scorecard, performance is measured and subdivided into five categories: financial, brand, sustainability, customer and employee. The annual goals set for these main five categories determine the focus of the organization for a given year, which is formalized in a goal letter. For compliance purposes, the goals are delegated from one level to another and occurs with little involvement of the subordinate level:
You don't build a successful international business if you start involving everyone in making decisions and goals and discuss these in detail with each other. I provide the frames within Team Managers can move. We construct the targets … and these are delegated to the Team Managers. It is not a bottom-up approach. It's not like we ask them 'provide us with your turnover indication, and then we will look if that is realistic'.
MT Business Navigator
Jorgenson and Messner (2010) indicate that, based on the balanced scorecard literature, it is as much the process of establishing a scorecard that yields benefit, as the resultant measurement schema. In the case of ORGZ, the process of establishing the scorecard is only little done with the involvement of Team Managers, while lower-level employees are not involved at all. Based on Wouters & Wilderom (2008), we could classify the lack of involving individuals in this process as rather coercive.
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and if a change of actions is required then this will be discussed with lower-level employees as well. As the majority of Team Managers indicated:
Every month we have a follow-up of our figures. We can see how we perform on each KPI. Then it is up to us to check if we are making progress. If not, then we have to adjust. This is done on basis of a plan of action, constructed by me and my department … From me it is expected that I fully know which performance measures there are, what the progress is, and what possible action plans are in place when performance is not in line with expectations. Together with my colleagues I discuss what we are going to do in that case.
Team Manager Logistics
Team Managers have the freedom to decide how they reach a target, formalized by a plan of action, and through the regular feedback loops of performance, managers were able to interactively provide input in current practices (repair), and adjust these practices if necessary (flexibility). In this case flexibility and repair are interrelated, because Team Managers have the ability to repair the control process by providing input, and can adjust the process by not strictly having to comply to it. Through intergroup participation between Team Managers and MT in cluster meetings, and having an interactive dialogue and explicit internal communication, control was characterized by global transparency as well (Wouters & Wilderom, 2009; Free, 2007; Dowling & Leech, 2014). In addition, possible conflicting interests and needs were dealt with, accordingly.
So in balancing between motivating and forcing compliance, MT forces compliance through top-down goal setting, by providing the frames in which Team Managers may freely operate, and decide on the road towards achieving objectives.
4.2 Facilitating Decision Making versus Monitoring and Evaluating
In order to achieve set targets and to determine if employees perform well within the frames, performance at ORGZ is measured extensively on a detailed level, used for two main purposes: to facilitate managers in decision making, and to monitor and evaluate employees.
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Knowing the business, knowing what contributes to performance, and knowing what parts you need to change to eventually get optimal performance levels is for me way more important than simply achieving targets.
MT Business Navigator
Through a performance dashboard all measured performance is available for every employee in the organization. For that reason, the PMS facilitates MT members and Team Managers by measuring performance and drivers of performance on a very detailed level. As one interviewee mentioned: “[By figure of speech], if you make a move to the left, we have measured it”. The entire MT perceives the measuring of performance as the provision of insight into certain drivers of more global objectives such as profit, turnover and customer satisfaction. In their perception it is up to the Team Managers to get a deep understanding of which drivers of performance are most influential. By measuring a lot of data, there is a large pond of possible drivers of performance. In addition, it provides the availability of information in case certain information or data is needed for decision making:
Certain performance metrics may not be relevant right now, but they could be relevant in a year or two.
MT Business Navigator The MT uses the provision of information as a control mechanism to enhance Team Managers’ understanding of how their department functions (internal transparency) and by doing so facilitate in their decision making. All Team Managers agreed that the measurement system enhances internal transparency, as illustrated:
If a process goes wrong, then you can be quite sure there is a certain performance measure to look at to make a change. If I think that an employee does not approach the customer in the right way, then I can find performance measures that will either support my view or not, so I can do something with it.
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how performance drivers need to be balanced for an optimal performance level. In this sense, performance metrics have an enabling power, rather than constraining, in supporting those people whose performance is being measured (Busco & Quattrone, 2015; Wouters & Roijmans, 2011).
From the data, it is clear that within ORGZ nearly every measurable aspect of a work process is measured, as illustrated by:
Only the amount of times a person goes to the toilet is not being measured. Nearly everything that could be measured in numbers, is measured.
Team Manager Sales
Although performance measures facilitate in decision making, they are also used to monitor employees on achieving targets, and evaluating them on their performance in order to minimize the monitoring problem (Ekanayake, 2004).
4.2.2 Monitoring and evaluating. The monitoring and evaluation process is formalized in an evaluation process document, and based on that, it consists of three official meetings between a superior and subordinate, where expectations, goal achievement and assessment are discussed. Every employee is evaluated on performance measures, however there is inconsistency in perceptions about the role these measures play. One Team Manager indicated that numbers and achieving objectives are the main part of evaluation. Context why performance is why it is, does not matter.
We have personal goals, and department goals. You either accomplish these goals or not. Personal development goals are not assessed, but that is more the soft part which is only discussed with [the superior]. But we definitely have KPIs where I’m personally judged on. If a goal is not achieved … [then it is classified as] ‘not oke’. Sometimes it feels very black and white, because there is an entire context behind these numbers. An example is me being evaluated on having game facilities for teenagers in the restaurant. Sony decided to remove all the PlayStations in the store, which is out of my hands, but my evaluation for that part was [classified as] ‘not oke’. It feels very unfair.
Team Manager Customer Relations
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based on subjectivism and soft factors. It is partly based on performance measures, but this is not leading, illustrated by:
Imagine: a [Team] Manager tries his best and gets the most out of himself, but you are in a market that makes things impossible for you to achieve your targets. How can numbers than be part of your assessment? You should be judged on your personal behavior and influence. I experience my evaluation as realistic in that sense.
Team Manager Sales
Overall, the majority of MT and Team Managers perceive that performance measurement is
predominantly used to be facilitated with information to enhance decision making, instead of being a monitoring tool. According to them, the role of performance measures in monitoring and evaluating is only minor. What is interesting, is that all lower-level employees felt quite the opposite, indicated by:
I do not know the numbers, because they are not really shared within the team. I have access to the performance dashboard, but I do not understand it really because it is one big mess of data.
Co-worker Logistics My evaluation is based on numbers of my department. But I do not think that the numbers specifically show how I do my work. I find it weird that these [performance measures] are a goal in my assessment. In my opinion they should be more specific and more personal. I do however think that my manager knows how I perform individually and how I take care of my responsibilities. I believe that that is what should be assessed, but the [department] numbers eventually determine my assessment the most.
Co-worker Sales
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labeled as a compression of ratings, more specifically ‘centrality bias’, in which a manager makes little distinction in evaluations within the group in favor of supporting group harmony (Motowidlo & Borman, 1977; Bol, 2011). While the assumption is to motivate people by favoring group harmony, the effect is said to demotivate employees and decrease the relation between effort and performance (moral hazard) (Golman & Bhatia, 2012), because knowing that the eventual evaluation will be compressed toward mean competence, the employee has less incentive to put in effort (Bol, 2011).
Whereas MT and Team Managers perceive performance measurement more as an enabling control to be facilitated in decision making, lower-level employees perceive it more as a coercive tool used for monitoring and evaluating them, mainly because the measured performance does not facilitate them in their work. However, the PMS is designed in a way that every employee, not only managers, should be facilitated with information to enhance decision making because every employee is empowered to have decision making authority. One of the reasons why they do not feel facilitated by the PMS is due to strictly having to comply to standardized work processes and procedures that prevail over the enabling function of the PMS, as indicated by a lower-level employee:
There are a lot of tasks, even though little customers are present in the store. I want to spend more time analyzing numbers and understanding things in more depth. I want to develop myself in this way, but I don’t think that I have the time to do that. I would love to do such things, but because [standardized] activities have to be done first, I simply do not have the time for that.
Co-worker Sales
On the one hand lower-level employees are empowered to make decisions in which performance measures (i.e. data) should facilitate them, while on the other hand a high degree of standardization restricts them in their effort to get a grip on these measures. I will discuss the interplay between empowerment and
standardization in more detail next.
4.3 Empowerment versus Standardization, Routines and Procedures
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We [the MT] stick to the main level performance like turnover and gross margin. We stimulate the process by encouraging Team Managers to analyze and understand underlying drivers of the main performance targets. We try to not intervene in this process.
MT Business Navigator
Empowerment is used by MT to motivate Team Managers, given that the main objectives are met. Every MT member and Team Manager agrees with this. Team Managers use empowerment as a control mechanism in rather the same way for lower-level employees. In the logistics and sales department, full-time lower-level employees and the Team Managers are being rotated in leading the daily operations. Although the lower-level employees do not have a management position, they are granted with decision making authority for the daily operations. From the job descriptions can be derived that ‘as an [ORGZ] co-worker you are not only led, you also take responsibility for leadership by leading yourself’, implying that every employee is expected to have leadership capabilities, even though someone is not a manager, as indicated as follows:
My personal goal is to have a team that knows exactly what to do without needing me. That they can guide themselves; that they have autonomy. I want to guide people in a certain direction, which I believe is right. But not like telling people what to do. I want them to think for themselves, by giving them responsibilities. I feel like I am some kind of facilitator.
Team Manager Sales
Being granted with these responsibilities motivated lower-level employees a lot, however it sometimes also created uncertainty, as is the case for one employee:
When I am scheduled as the daily operations manager, I need to tell my boss what to do. But what if he thinks differently about my decisions? And who is responsible? Am I? Or is he? Sometimes it could be quite weird.
Co-worker Logistics
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allowed, as long as the main performance targets were met and certain procedures, rules and guidelines were complied with. Thus, at all hierarchical levels the concept of flexibility is included as an important enabling feature of this control mechanism. However, complying to certain standardized procedures, rules and guidelines poses a restriction on employees, which is characteristic for a coercive logic.
4.3.2 Standardization, routines, and procedures. ORGZ has a lot of standardized tasks and activities that do not vary with the main objectives. These tasks need to be done regardless of how the organization performs. They are part of the procedures and routines in the organization, even formalized in a routines goodsflow document for the logistics department. For lower-level employees this caused them to spend too much time on activities that are not motivating them. They would rather spend their time on activities where they can and want to develop themselves personally. Besides that, they feel that certain unstandardized activities contribute more to increasing performance, but these activities have no priority over the standardized ones. The latter consumes a large portion of the resources available, and thus prevents performance to increase through unstandardized tasks. This phenomenon can be characterized as the 'knowing-doing' gap, which is the difficulty of effectively translating information coming from the measurement of processes into effective tasks (Taticchi et al., 2010). An illustration:
Approaching customers is the most important task in my opinion, but I cannot simply do that every time. There are so much [standardized] tasks that I have to do behind a computer, which I experience as very annoying because the customer cannot approach me adequately and neither can I, vice versa.
Co-worker Sales
There are so many things here I believe are worth spending time on, but I simply do not have the time to pursuit them. Even for working on my [standardized] tasks, I feel I have too little time. For example optimizing the [inventory ordering system]. We can gain so much more efficiency benefits if someone takes the time to optimize the system. I agreed with my Team Manager that I will take that responsibility, but currently there simply is not enough time. [Standardized] tasks have priority.
Co-worker Logistics
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with responsibilities and decision-making authority, and are expected, according to the job descriptions and their Team Managers, to show initiative. They are being facilitated to strive for their individual needs, such as personal development and autonomy. However, they feel they are restricted in doing so by having to comply to standardized tasks and procedures, causing individual needs and interests to conflict with the need of MT to comply to procedures, routines and rules. Thus, the exercised enabling control of empowerment does not match with the perceived coercive control of standardization. They are conflicting. In relation to autonomy and personal development, task mastery is characteristic for enabling control and responds to one of the basic employee needs for motivation (Free, 2007). People want to spend time on certain tasks because they want to master those activities that they enjoy doing. Due to the high degree of standardization, especially lower-level employees felt restricted in doing so. The high level of standardization at ORGZ is thus clearly a concept of coercive control (Free, 2007).
Overall, standardized work processes, procedures and routines restricted the enabling effects of empowerment, and implicitly the enabling effect of performance measurement for decision making. One standardized procedure, however, had both enabling and coercive effects while being coercively exercised.
Standardized rule of thumb. The organization uses a so called standardized rule of thumb to adjust the resource planning, meaning that for every euro in revenue that deviates from the target, a percentage of labor hours should deviate accordingly. According to one of the employees: “If revenue is 5% less than targeted at a given point in time, then the labor hours should decrease with 2,5% as well”. As a result labor hours were shortened significantly, and besides the MT, none of the employees had any input in this decision. Both lower-level employees and Team Managers felt limited, restricted and demotivated because of this, which is no surprise (Free, 2007; Ahrens & Chapman, 2004; Adler & Borys, 1996; Chapman & Kihn, 2009; Jordan and Messner, 2012). However, they did not cause resistance at first, but accepted it and tried to find creative and innovative ways to deal with the top-down implemented limitations by the autonomy they possess.
I felt the pressure, but it also provided opportunities. Because if you suddenly are obliged to do things differently if things do not go well, then things could become very innovative. You can come up with solutions you had never thought about, because you didn’t have to.
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I see it more as an extra lever of pressure to motivate us to work even more efficiently, and I feel that the cut in employable hours is realistic and should definitely be possible.
Team Manager Logistics
All Team Managers supported this perspective. Although they were clearly constrained in their efforts, Team Managers and lower-level employees were positively challenged and encouraged to be creative at first. We would rather expect them to be demotivated and feel restricted (Free, 2007; Ahrens & Chapman, 2004; Adler & Borys, 1996; Chapman & Kihn, 2009; Jordan and Messner, 2012), but since they perceived the coercive pressure as fair, the exercised control was perceived as enabling.
However, they all experienced the point where the restrictions weighed too heavily, and from that point on the exercised control was not perceived as fair anymore. Since ORGZ has a lot of standardized tasks and activities, that need to be done regardless of how the organization performs, after a certain point work pressure began to increase and demotivate people. At this point some agency problems began to prevail. Instead of complying with the top-down delegated restrictions, one Team Manager stopped searching for creative and innovative solutions and started to measure everything that could possibly show that the implemented cut of resources was a failure:
I experienced there were too few labor hours to my disposal. In that period [my department] monitored everything to show that we cannot keep going like this. At that point, I decided to schedule 20 man hours extra [despite the restriction] … and that’s that. It happened, and that has a certain consequence. But I believe our work should be feasible. I told my team to start monitoring everything, so I could go to my manager with that data and say: ‘look, this situation doesn’t work at all. It’s all fun and games, but we cannot make it’.
Team Manager Sales
Another Team Manager built-up a business case where she experimented with using more resources (i.e. personnel) than what was expected, and compared the performance measures of that period with a period in which she used the resources which were expected of her:
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am only allowed to have two sales persons to my disposal for my department, which is way too few. Now, with my business case I can go to the Business Navigator and say: ‘Listen, this is the situation now. You can see that with more labor hours the turnover significantly increases. Try and calculate what you are missing annually in turnover’.
Team Manager Sales
Both Team Managers used performance measurement bottom-up to counter the coercive control pressure of the MT. This phenomenon relates to control being a reciprocal activity (Berry et al., 2009). In this kind of situation the MT imposes control on Team Managers, leading to dysfunctional reactions. According to Berry et al. (2009) this is characterized by ‘sub-groups’ reacting so powerfully that the intention of the exercised control is undermined. By having autonomy and being empowered to make their own decisions, Team Managers were able to react in this way.
In the next section, I will discuss the main findings and implications in relation to the research objective and provide avenues for future research.
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
5.1 Discussion of Main Findings
This study sought to find out how the duality between coercive and enabling control mechanisms regarding PMS influences motivation and compliance of individuals. As is the case with the majority of research about enabling and coercive MC, this study mainly builds on the work of Adler & Borys (1996), with some refinements of other influential studies (Ahrens & Chapman, 2004; Heumann et al., 2015). While most research in this field strongly focuses on enabling control, this study takes the role of coercive control into account as well. More specifically, the duality of both control styles. In line with findings from Malmi & Brown (2008), who argue that control mechanisms are interrelated and can be seen as a package within organization, I found several control mechanisms to influence one another.
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the business planning process, allowing for interactive dialogues between hierarchical levels, regular feedback loops, and knowledge sharing. In line with prior research, employees were motivated accordingly (Wouters & Wilderom, 2009; Free, 2007; Dowling & Leech, 2014). Overall, the enabling effects outweighed the coercive effects, resulting in both increased motivation and compliance to top-down directions.
The second relation between control mechanisms relates to the dual nature of performance measurement, translating to facilitating individuals with information on the one hand, and monitoring and evaluating them on the other hand. Through extensive performance measurement, the PMS at ORGZ enables MT members and Team Managers in facilitating large and detailed amounts of data of work processes to increase transparency for decision making. This motivates as it facilitates managers to make well-founded decisions. It provides them the opportunity to really get a feeling for their business and understand how performance drivers need to be balanced for an optimal performance level. With regards to the monitoring and evaluating function of performance measurement, both MT and Team Managers perceived performance measures to play a minor role. For them, performance measurement is predominantly used to be facilitated with information for enhancing decision making. This finding is supported by Busco & Quattrone (2015) and Wouters & Roijmans (2011) who found performance metrics to have an enabling power, rather than constraining, in supporting those people whose performance is being measured.
However, lower-level employees were not explicitly facilitated by the measurement of performance. For them it mainly served as a tool for their superiors to monitor their performance and being evaluated on it. They found that they were being evaluated too much on performance measures, largely based on group (department) performance, on which they have little influence. This demotivated them because (a) they feel that they are not fairly being valued for the work they deliver, and (b) they can do little to change performance measures for their evaluation because they only make up a small portion of the group.
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The third relationship between control mechanisms was found to be the duality of complying to standardized activities, rules and procedures and being motivated through empowerment. All stakeholder groups were motivated through empowerment as an enabling control mechanism, which was designed to provide freedom to make decisions for a subordinate within given boundaries by the superior. Deviations from certain routines were allowed, as long as the main performance targets were met and certain procedures, rules and guidelines were complied with. The latter condition was characterized by a high degree of standardization, rules and procedures to which employees had to comply. This coercive control mechanism demotivated especially lower-level employees and conflicts with the enabling effect of empowerment, because lower-level employees are granted with responsibilities and freedom they cannot make sufficient use of due to a high degree of standardized tasks and activities, resulting in a restriction of task mastery. This is complementary to the view of Jorgenson & Messner (2010) and Free (2007), who argue that employee attitude is more positive when formalization enables them to better master their tasks. The constraining effect of standardization, rules and procedures was amplified even more by the coercive adjustment of resource planning through a so called ‘standardized rule of thumb’. In a situation of significant underperformance, employees had even less resources (i.e. time and people) available for unstandardized and satisfying activities. From this perspective, the two coercive control styles complemented each other in forcing compliance and causing even further demotivation. A study where complementary effects of control mechanisms were found as well, was conducted by Friis et al. (2015). Although they studied the effects of certain control mechanisms on incentive pay, the underlying reasoning applies here as well.
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As a starting point, the research gap was identified to be a lack of understanding about the duality of enabling and coercive control, which is supported by several authors (Stansbury & Barry, 2007; Heumann et al., 2015; Sundaramurthy & Lewis 2003; Chenhall, 2003). I contribute to our understanding about this gap by (a) discriminating between the three main function of the PMS, (b) studying different stakeholder groups based on hierarchical levels, and (c) by making a distinction between exercised control and perceived control. The latter is in line with Ouchi (1978) and Heumann et al. (2015) who made similar distinctions between given and received control, and exercised and recognized control, respectively. By using this approach, this study reveals that the PMS was characterized by both enabling and coercive control styles. We can see differences in the PMS’ main functions, as well as differences between perceptions of the stakeholder groups. The former contributes to the call of Wouters & Wilderom (2008) to better understand the dualistic nature of PMSs. The latter contributes to the call of Heumann et al. (2015) to gain a better understanding of management control through the perspective of different hierarchical stakeholders.
Adler & Borys (1996) called for a deeper understanding of individual differences and variability in how the four design characteristics of their framework are perceived. By using the adjusted framework of Ahrens & Chapman (2004), I found that the PMS did not use an enabling nor coercive control style consistently on all design characteristics (i.e. repair, flexibility, internal- and global transparency). Rather, some control mechanisms (i.e. user involvement in business planning) were characterized by flexibility and the ability to repair, while other mechanisms (i.e. standardization and procedures) were characterized by inflexibility and the inability to repair. In this light, I found evidence for variability between the four design characteristics, which is in line with Groen et al. (2012).
Finally, I contribute to the literature of MCS by studying real control systems as they operate in practice. According to Berry et al. (2009), it is essential that theoretical speculation is strongly grounded in organizational reality, especially for an integrative activity such as MCS design and use. My findings help create a deeper understanding of issues found in practice and factors influencing control to be perceived as enabling or coercive. The latter contributes to the call of Free (2007) as well, who suggested that further work aimed at identifying the factors that militate toward enabling and coercive systems, respectively, would significantly contribute to theory and practice.
5.3 Practical Implications
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comply. My findings provide insight for practitioners to be aware of differences in how control is exercised, and how it is perceived. For example, employees may be motivated through group harmony and team building. However, extending this mindset to employee evaluation, by making little distinction between individuals, creates a source of demotivation. The same goes for balancing empowerment, as a form of motivation, and standardization, rules, and procedures, as a source for demotivation and restrictions. Being aware, as a manager, what control mechanisms are in play, how they are perceived by employees, and how they influence one another, is crucial for aligning individual behavior with organizational objectives. Having a deep understanding how these forces work, provides managers the cognitive tools to design their organization effectively and being in control.
5.4 Limitations and Avenues for Future Research
My study has several limitations. First, as a researcher, I was employed within the case organization during the study. This could have caused some subjectivity and researcher’s bias. However, despite this being a limitation, it proved to be rather advantageous for the research. For one, it provided me with easy access to internal documents. In addition, interviewees were quite comfortable and could speak freely with terminology used within the organization without having to explain what everything means. This resulted in rather detailed and specific descriptions instead of abstract ones.
As for transferability, the coercive control styles identified mainly existed because of a standardized business format to which the case organization, as a franchisee, had to comply. The duality effects found are thus only limited to the context of a PMS within a global franchise concept. The use of a PMS and its control styles could, however, be rather different for smaller organizations, and non-franchises. Extending our understanding of the duality between enabling and coercive control mechanisms to these settings would be advantageous for transferability purposes.
In addition my findings suggest that multiple control styles influence each other. Within the field of enabling and coercive management control, this area is under-researched, implying that no firm conclusions can be drawn yet. A fruitful avenue would be to test the relations between control mechanisms found in this study.
