IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/mimoxx/v32y2002i2p70-92.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Return of the Machine Bureaucracy? - Management Control in the Work Settings of Professionals

Author

Listed:
  • Dan Kärreman
  • Stefan Sveningsson
  • Mats Alvesson

Abstract

Knowledge-intensive firms are frequently believed to operate under conditions that invalidate industrial-bureaucratic forms of managerial control. The nature of work, the professionalism of the workers makes traditional organizational structures and managerial techniques archaic and inefficient. However, empirical material from recent studies in two major knowledge-intensive firms indicates that traditional managerial forms of control have maintained and even reclaimed a seemingly vital space in organizational practice. The two cases belong to different branches, thus possibly prefiguring an emergent trend toward the industrialization of at least parts of knowledge work, involving standardization of tasks and methods of working, reinforcing the exchangeability of individuals and units, and increased efforts to manage by numbers and other criteria from the past.

Suggested Citation

  • Dan Kärreman & Stefan Sveningsson & Mats Alvesson, 2002. "The Return of the Machine Bureaucracy? - Management Control in the Work Settings of Professionals," International Studies of Management & Organization, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(2), pages 70-92, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:mimoxx:v:32:y:2002:i:2:p:70-92
    DOI: 10.1080/00208825.2002.11043661
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00208825.2002.11043661
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00208825.2002.11043661?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carlos Martin-Rios, 2016. "Innovative management control systems in knowledge work: a middle manager perspective," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 181-204, May.
    2. Ellen Haustein & Robert Luther & Peter Schuster, 2014. "Management control systems in innovation companies: a literature based framework," Metrika: International Journal for Theoretical and Applied Statistics, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 343-382, February.
    3. Staccioli, Jacopo & Napoletano, Mauro, 2021. "An agent-based model of intra-day financial markets dynamics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 331-348.
    4. Spanò, Rosanna & Grossi, Giuseppe & Landi, Giovanni Catello, 2022. "Academic entrepreneurial hybrids: Accounting and accountability in the case of MegaRide," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(5).
    5. Cirillo, Valeria & Rinaldini, Matteo & Staccioli, Jacopo & Virgillito, Maria Enrica, 2018. "Workers’ awareness context in Italian 4.0 factories," GLO Discussion Paper Series 240, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    6. Valeria Cirillo & José Molero Zayas, 2019. "Digitalizing industry? Labor, technology and work organization: an introduction to the Forum," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 46(3), pages 313-321, September.
    7. Angelo Moro & Matteo Rinaldini & Jacopo Staccioli & Maria Enrica Virgillito, 2019. "Control in the era of surveillance capitalism: an empirical investigation of Italian Industry 4.0 factories," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 46(3), pages 347-360, September.
    8. Florian, Mona, 2018. "Unlikely allies: Bureaucracy as a cultural trope in a grassroots volunteer organization," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 151-161.
    9. Valeria Cirillo & Matteo Rinaldini & Jacopo Staccioli & Maria Enrica Virgillito, 2018. "Workers' intervention authority in Italian 4.0 factories: autonomy and discretion," LEM Papers Series 2018/13, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    10. Royston Greenwood & Stan X. Li & Rajshree Prakash & David L. Deephouse, 2005. "Reputation, Diversification, and Organizational Explanations of Performance in Professional Service Firms," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(6), pages 661-673, December.
    11. Sébastien Gand & Jean-Claude Sardas & Annika Schilling, & Andreas Werr,, 2009. "Professional identities at stake in strategic change - on the formation of professional selves in changing PSFs," Post-Print hal-00818098, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:mimoxx:v:32:y:2002:i:2:p:70-92. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/mimo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.