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Organisational control refers to any environmentally justifiable mechanism or practice which secures individual conformity to organisational order and specific role expectations. The present literature treats control as an instrumental means for the attainment of organisational goals and fails to address the subject appropriately in terms of its own structure, process and contextual underpinnings. This paper draws from the author's experience of two Chinese universities and discovers that an independent structure and a systematic process, justified by culture and buttressed by political economy, can exist and operate within organisations primarily for order and control. Basic features of organisational control in China include: a party apparatus following the track of and exerting control over administration or management to the basic functional cell, and an administrative mechanism and a residential network keeping people in line from workplace to residence; routine control of daily activities, contingency control for tasks and campaigns, and problem control for likely and actually occurring troubles; organisation-to-organisation and organisation-to-division control through exclusive meetings, classified documents, quota appropriation, rank conferment and appointment, and organisation-to-individual control through mass vigilance, inclusion, ideology, residence, civil rewards, confidential records, administrative discipline and quasi-justice. These structural and processual features are in tune with the Chinese culture and supported by the Communist political economy.

Managers of a sample of private and public banks in Greece were surveyed through the vehicle of agency theory. It was found that managers in private banks showed greater alignment of interests with those of the bank, their pay related to outcomes and they were more mobile in their jobs. Private banks also used more control mechanisms to align interests of their managers with those of the bank and displayed a different working climate. Given evolving organisation structures resulting from deregulation, the convergence of information technology and communications and the entry of firms from other industries, the implications of the findings for governance are important.

This paper examines the roles of accounting and costing in the management of coal mining during the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and considers the impact of the agent's reputation in the development and use of these systems.

The role of the board of directors in firm strategy has long been the subject of debate. However, research efforts have suffered from several deficiencies: the lack of an overarching theoretical perspective, reliance on proxies for the strategy role rather than a direct measure of it and the lack of quantitative data linking this role to firm financial performance. We propose a new theoretical perspective to explain the board's role in strategy, integrating organisational control and agency theories. We categorise a board's approach to strategy according to two constructs: strategic control and financial control. The extent to which either construct is favoured depends on contextual factors such as board power, environmental uncertainty and information asymmetry.

This article discusses the importance of 'hacking work' in organisations, specifically in relation to control over workers in organisations operating within the neoliberal ideological project. Noting the shift in the discourse of hacking beyond references to computer-mediated, anti-establishment oriented activities, we draw on the current meaning of the term 'hacking' that encompasses any 'shortcuts' that can be applied to more efficiently complete tasks. We argue that in workplace contexts, the emergence of 'work hacking' practices can be observed, whereby employees invest time, effort and tacit knowledge into inventing and implementing various 'tricks' in order to fulfil organisational demands while maintaining their own well-being. We discuss how 'hacking work' practices, even if seemingly subversive, present a new form of work intensification and control within the labour process. They can be seen as an exercise in 'working to work' through self-disciplining, aimed at ensuring that the employee completes the allocated tasks regardless of the insufficiency of time and other resources. Their emergence also points to the devaluing of work itself, manifested in a view of work as no more than a set of tasks that need to be 'hacked'.

"A review of managerial literature highlights the crucial importance of shared culture and common schemes of interpretation in organisational learning. The interpretative and sensemaking approaches of organisational learning insert themselves deeply in the process of the construction of social uniformity and cognitive homogeneity. Individual learning, culture, beliefs and rationality - the shared mental models - are the targets of confirmation processes. Thus, this specific kind of organisational learning cannot be considered as normatively neutral, but as a political process. A case study of a bank illustrates that organisational learning can be based on a structured social construction of cognitive homogeneity which generates an increase of control and enhances power of the management by reinforcing the legitimacy of decisions. However, this case study also shows that learning and non-learning are the two faces of the same process or, in other words, that organisational learning can produce unawareness and unintentional non-learning by too much cultural uniformity." (author's abtract)

A review of managerial literature highlights the crucial importance of shared culture and common schemes of interpretation in organisational learning. The interpretative and sensemaking approaches of organisational learning insert themselves deeply in the process of the construction of social uniformity and cognitive homogeneity. Individual learning, culture, beliefs and rationality - the shared mental models - are the targets of confirmation processes. Thus, this specific kind of organisational learning cannot be considered as normatively neutral, but as a political process. A case study of a bank illustrates that organisational learning can be based on a structured social construction of cognitive homogeneity which generates an increase of control and enhances power of the management by reinforcing the legitimacy of decisions. However, this case study also shows that learning and non-learning are the two faces of the same process or, in other words, that organisational learning can produce unawareness and unintentional nonlearning by too much cultural uniformity. ; Eine Durchsicht der Managementliteratur verdeutlicht die zentrale Bedeutung gemeinsamer Kultur und geteilter Deutungsmuster für das Organisationslernen. Die interpretativen und deutungsbezogenen Ansätze des Organisationslernens basieren auf tiefgreifenden Prozessen zur Konstruktion sozialer Einheitlichkeit und kognitiver Homogenität. Die Absicherungsprozesse beziehen sich auf das individuelle Lernen, Kultur, Werthaltungen und Rationalität - die gemeinsamen mentalen Modelle. Insofern kann diese Form des Organisationslernens nicht als wertneutral angesehen werden; es handelt sich vielmehr um einen politischen Prozeß. An einer Fallstudie in einer Bank wird illustriert, daß Organisationslernen auf einer sozial konstruierten kognitiven Homogenität aufgebaut werden kann. Dabei wird Management-Kontrolle erweitert und ihre Macht verstärkt, indem die Legitimität ihrer Entscheidungen abgesichert wird. Allerdings dokumentiert die Fallstudie auch, daß Lernen und Nicht-Lernen zwei Seiten des gleichen Prozesses sind, anders gewendet: Organisationslernen kann zur Ausblendung von Wahrnehmung beitragen und - unbeabsichtigt - Nicht-Lernen generieren, wenn zuvor ein zu hohes Maß an kultureller Homogenität etabliert worden ist.

In acknowledgement and appreciation -- About the authors -- About the contributors -- About this book -- Publisher's acknowledgements -- The organisational setting -- Understanding organisational behaviour -- Approaches to organisation and management -- The organisational environment -- The individual -- Individual differences and diversity -- Learning and development -- Perception and communication -- Work motivation and job satisfaction -- Groups, leadership and management -- Working in groups and teams -- Leadership in organisations -- Understanding management -- Structure, strategy and effectiveness -- Organisation structure and design -- Technology and organisations -- Organisational control and power -- Strategy, corporate responsibility and ethics -- Organisational culture and change -- Organisational performance and development -- Appendix a: review of personal skills and employability -- Glossary -- Index

Successive UK governments have blamed poor rates of relative social mobility on the tendency of elite occupations to exclude according to social class. Organisational programmes implemented in response aim to identify talented young people from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds, help them identify as 'legitimate' professionals, and equip them with relevant knowledge and skills. Based on interviews with 35 participants in one programme and drawing on Foucauldian perspectives on governmentality and disciplinary power, the current study explores how these programmes may reproduce inequalities rather than challenge the status quo. It shows how a dominant discourse of merit invites participants to adopt a subject position that conforms with an idealised professional identity and how they shape their conduct in response. The core contribution is to suggest that social mobility initiatives framed by organisations as mechanisms to empower disadvantaged young people, might be read as expressions of neo-liberal governmentality, unequal power and corporate control.