Management Control Research and the Management of Uncertainty: Rethinking Knowledge in Management

The role of managers in organizations has long been construed as that of decision-making under conditions of limited rationality and uncertainty (Simon & March, 1958; Cyert & March, 1963). For instance, decision- makers can only access a limited set of alternative solutions to the problem at hand, or might discover their preferences between competing alternatives through the decision-making process itself. The uncertainty about both the future conditions of the environment and the possible outcomes of ambiguous decisions would reinforce the consequences of limited rationality. In an organizational context of uncertainty and ambiguity, management control researchers have underlined how management control systems might play an enabling role for managers through enhanced monitoring and learning about organizational performance (Burchell et al., 1980; Ferreira & Otley, 2009). The divide between practice and research, or the lack of relevance of research for practice, has been documented and commented on by several prominent researchers in our field of management control (see for instance, Baldvinsdottir et al., 2010; Hopwood 2007, 2008, 2009; Otley, 2001; Scapens, 2008; van Helden & Northcott, 2010) or in the field of management studies (e.g. Miller et al., 2009; Van de Ven & Johnson, 2006). However, little has been said about how management control research might facilitate the management of uncertainty in organizational contexts and enhance the enabling properties of management control systems.