A Contemporary Concept of Organizational Control: Its Dependence on Shared Values and Impact on Motivation

Increasing global competition and new technological developments have fostered the need and possibilities to enhance organizational efficiency by increasingly outsource or automate routine tasks. These developments lead to increasingly complex settings. The increasing complexity of organizational processes and shifts in societal values to higher priorities of personal autonomy have led to issues in using classical control mechanisms such as output and behaviour controls, due to the declining measurability of outputs, increasing degree of knowledge required concerning the actual processes, and their limitation of personal autonomy. This paper extends knowledge about control by investigating the role of self-control as an alternative to classical control mechanisms. Particularly, we analyze how a reliance on shared values can be used for purposes of control, along with their motivational consequences. The results of a cross-sectional survey of 346 managers emphasize two methods of fostering intrinsic motivation: (1) employing self-control in the presence of shared values; and (2) combining output and behaviour control in the absence of shared values. This study contributes to the understanding of organizational controls by providing a contemporary concept of control relying on autonomy (i.e. self-control), first empirical evidence of shared values as an important antecedent, and by focusing on organizational controls as systems, thus considering their interactive motivational effects. Consequently, the results reveal that the simultaneous use of both output and behaviour control mechanisms can mitigate their particular disadvantages; while a mere reliance on output controls enhances extrinsic motivation and diminishes intrinsic motivation.