Communication Yearbook 16

Stanley Deetz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135148232
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Communication Yearbook 16 focuses on the study of communication within corporate organizations. Part II explores the role of communication studies in such timely issues as communication technology, globalization and multiculturalism. The final sectionfocuses on three theoretical debates in which contributors discuss communication during initial interaction, the motivation to communicate, and communication in decision-making and problem-solving groups. Commentaries on each chapter provide alternative perspectives, extend issues of significance and help engage the reader in the contemporary debates in each area.

Section 1

New Views of Organisational Communication: American and European Perspectives

1

Cultural-Ideological Modes of Management Control: A Theory and a Case Study of a Professional Service Company

Mats Alvesson

University of Gothenburg, Sweden

This chapter argues that traditional conceptualizations of organizational and management control should be complemented by an elaborated theory of cultural control. Current efforts addressing the topic of control have operated with a single, overall concept (such as ideology, clan, or culture) that either covers too broad a territory or focuses only on restricted elements of cultural control forms, thus leading to a risk of neglecting important aspects. A fourfold theory of cultural-ideological modes of control is suggested, based on the concepts of (a) collective, (b) performance-related, (c) ideological, and (d) perceptual control. The chapter argues that these control forms are predominant in complex, decentralized situations, but are likely to have some influence in most organizations. A case study of a computer consultancy company illustrates and refines the theoretical argument. The study also contributes to an understanding of the management and organization of adhocracies and loosely coupled companies.

DURING the past decade, both socioeconomic changes and theoretical developments have led to an interest in the “nonbureaucratic” aspects and forms of management, organization, and control. Instead of rules, standardization of work procedures, direct supervision, and other means of control targeted at employee behavior, indirect forms of influence targeted at values and norms in the workplace, the development of a common spirit among all personnel irrespective of rank, efforts to knit employees closer to the company, use of specific verbal expressions, leadership behavior, and physical artifacts that communicate specific meanings are emphasized. Despite this interest, little work has been done in relating culture to control in a theoretically informed way. This chapter aims (a) to develop a framework for thinking about “cultural-ideological” modes of control in organizations, (b) to illuminate management style and corporate culture in a case study of a computer consultancy firm in which such modes of control are salient, and (c) to relate corporate culture to labor process theory.

The major objective of this chapter is to present a theory of these new forms of cultural-ideological management control in which pervasive communication of the “correct” way to perceive and relate to corporate reality is central. The aim of the theory is to complement predominating understandings of “objectivistic-behavioral” forms of management control that match the bureaucratic form. This organizational form has made behavioral and output control salient, and past studies have given us an adequate understanding of these control types. This focus has, however, prevented us from fully recognizing and studying other modes and targets of control. Our understanding of clans and cultures in terms of control is still rather crude.

The proposed conceptualization is partly based on the development of new organizational forms and types of labor processes—or at least forms and types that have recently emerged on a broader scale—associated with the rise of professional service organizations and other qualified forms of industrial activity (sometimes called knowledge-intensive firms), where the level of complexity and uncertainty makes traditional forms of behavioral and output control insufficient (e.g., Burris, 1989a, 1989b; Hedberg, 1990; Kunda & Barley, 1988; Mills et al., 1983; Starbuck, 1990; Sveiby & Risling, 1986). Control forms in these types of organizations often differ from those in traditional bureaucracies.

A second objective is to illuminate the management of professional service companies with strong adhocratic features. This will be done through an empirical case study of a computer consultancy company that is typical of this organizational type. This kind of organization is strongly decentralized and exhibits a situation in which behavioral and output control is not possible. The professional service industry is a significant part of the service and information economy. Related to its expansion is the popularity of the project organization form (adhocracy), either as the principal way of organizing corporations (Mintzberg, 1983b; Sveiby & Risling, 1986) or as an important organization form within an overall bureaucracy (Kanter, 1983). Few adhocracies have been carefully studied. The theory of management control developed in this chapter informs the interpretation of the case study. The latter illustrates and provides empirical material for qualifying the theory.

Thus the theoretical and empirical purposes of this chapter are closely related and support each other. Using the vocabulary of Glaser and Strauss (1967), we can say that the chapter contributes to formal theory through a reconceptualization of management control and to substantive theory through analysis of organizational forms and managerial practices of a project-based professional service organization.

A third objective involves some modest theoretical synthesizing. The chapter is written primarily within a culture theory tradition, but tries to incorporate contributions from labor process theory, with the following caveat.¹ With a background in labor process theory and, during recent years, in organizational culture studies, I believe that the former is too “materialistic,” while culture studies, at least in the fields of organization and management, often carry a heavily “idealistic” and “consensual” bias. Labor process theory has been criticized for neglect of the subjectivistic dimension and for a deterministic view on local actors and dynamics (Knights & Willmott, 1990; Knights, Willmott, & Collinson, 1985; Storey, 1985). A similar critique might be directed at mainstream organization theory of the structural and contingency type, which has repeatedly been emphasized by organizational culture/symbolism writers (e.g., Alvesson & Berg, 1992; Frost, Moore, Louis, Lundberg, & Martin, 1985; Pondy, Frost, Morgan, & Dandridge, 1983; Smircich, 1983a). Within the field of cultural studies of organizations, the neglect of the labor process and the materialistic aspects of work is widespread and large parts of the literature concentrate on aspects of peripheral importance in relationship to the labor process (Alvesson, 1992a, chap. 6).² Theoretical inspiration from organizational culture and labor process theory can then be viewed as a research strategy for achieving a new theory/conceptualization of management control in informing a detailed case study.

The chapter is structured as follows. First, there is a discussion of the concept and forms of control in organizations. The limitations of traditional structural-bureaucratic conceptualizations are cited, and problems with a broad concept of cultural or ideological control are explored. A theory is presented that captures different modes of control of a cultural-ideological type. (I am using the concept of theory in the “weak” sense of a framework that sensitizes us to some important dimensions of the object of study.) This theory is then illustrated and refined through a case study of a computer consultancy company. This study illuminates important aspects of work organization and management by exemplifying a professional service organization with strong features of loose coupling and adhocracy. Suggestions are then offered as to when cultural-ideological forms of management control are especially significant. It is also argued that these control forms are present, to some extent, in a large number of modern organizations.

Forms of Management Control

Traditional Concepts of Control

Most studies of social control of work and organization in so-called nonideological organizations, such as business corporations, have traditionally focused on the objective, behavioral aspects of control. Control is seen as a matter of direct influence over work behavior. For example, in a review article, Simpson (1985) identifies five modes of control over work. The first three are taken from Edwards (1979), who discusses simple versus technical versus bureaucratic modes of control. Simple control is the personal exercise of power of the boss (owner, supervisor) over the worker, untrammeled by rules and similar restrictions/guidelines. Technical control is embedded in the technology of work (e.g., the assembly line). Bureaucratic control relies partly on supervision, but this is reduced to a carrier of rules, policies, formal incentives, and other impersonal devices. Simpson adds to this occupational control, in which a profession defines appropriate/nonappropriate work behavior, and worker self-control, in which the producers themselves have a high degree of discretion.

Burris (1989a, 1989b) suggests that a new organizational type, the technocracy, has developed recently that incorporates earlier forms of organizational control such as technical, bureaucratic, and professional control. Technocratic control is characterized, among other things, by a flattening of bureaucratic hierarchy, a polarization into “expert” and “nonexpert” sectors, and a substitution of expertise for rank position as a primary basis of authority.

Until quite recently, this “objectivistic” view of control was dominant. In his synthesis of research on organizational structure, Mintzberg’s (1983b) five coordination mechanisms concern objective, external control forms and hardly anything on the significance of the whole sphere of culture and ideology. Ouchi (1979), for example, notes that “present organization theory … concentrates on the bureaucratic form to the exclusion of all else” (p. 840). When ideology is considered, it basically legitimates these forms of “objective” social control (Burris, 1989b) or appears as a major control device in very special organizations, such as the “missionary” one (Mintzberg, 1983a).

Culture and Control

It is clear, however, that the limits of organizational control hardly rest with “objective” means. Managers also often seek to enact a particular form of organizational experience for others (Deetz, 1992; Mumby, 1988; Smircich & Morgan, 1982).

They may attempt to define interpretations and meanings that can become widely understood and shared by organization members so that actions are guided by a common definition of the situation. Those with power are able to influence the course of organizational development through control over valued resources and through use of symbols by which organization members mediate their experience. (Smircich, 1983b, p. 161)

The neglect of the ideational sphere, including ideologies, worldviews, cognitive frameworks, cultures, value system, feelings, and so on, has recently been a target of criticism, as part of the rapid expansion and current popularity of organizational culture and symbolism theory (e.g., Frost et al., 1985; Ouchi & Wilkins, 1985; Smircich, 1983a). At least such criticism is latent in writings on the importance of values, taken-for-granted assumptions, meaning patterns, and so on for management and organization. A problem with many of these writings—from the viewpoint of the present chapter—is that they do not give the control concept, with its implications for the significance of power (and possible conflicting interests), the benefit of more consensual and harmonic preconceptions of “shared values, norms and understandings” (Alvesson, 1987). Culture and symbolism theory raise theoretical reasons for new views on control. How people experience and create meaning from the situations, objects, and people they encounter is crucial for their way of functioning. More basic than bureaucratic or administrative person, then, is cultural or symbolic person.

Especially significant in terms of control is culture in complex and uncertain organizational situations that demand a high degree of decentralization. Here bureaucracy, almost by definition, fails. The fact that management cannot control behavior or output does not mean, however, that managers give up intentions of control. As Weick (1987a) suggests:

Whenever you have what appears to be successful decentralization, if you look more closely, you will discover that it was always preceded by a period of intense centralization where a set of core values were hammered out and socialized into people before the people were turned loose to set their own “independent, autonomous” ways. (p. 124)

The significance of socialization has attracted great interest recently, and it illuminates the role of culture in managing workers with a high degree of “behavioral autonomy.” However, it captures only parts of the control issue in highly decentralized contexts. The durability of the effects of a (limited) socialization phase is not endless. It would not take care of all the control problems of management, except perhaps in very stable situations involving people who had experienced a very long and intense socialization process (for example, scientists and physicians). The core values must be hammered out regularly, through various means. This concept will be examined further in a subsequent section.

Connected to this popularity of culture is an increased interest in the related concepts of clan and ideology as forms of control. Ouchi (1979, 1980) has suggested that the clan can serve as an organizational control form in which the level of uncertainty is too great for the classic solutions—the market and the bureaucracy—to function. The clan rests on “social agreement on a broad range of values and beliefs” and “relies for its control upon a deep level of common agreement between members on what constitutes proper behavior, and it requires a high level of commitment on the part of each individual to those socially prescribed behaviors” (Ouchi, 1979, p. 838). This appealing condition might be achieved, Ouchi suggests, through selective recruitment, socialization, and “ritualized, ceremonial forms of control.” Control is here conceptualized on a rather abstract level. Little is said about the major routes taken by managers to achieve and maintain the clanlike qualities in an organization. Some authors talk about cultural control, but also on a fairly general level (see, e.g., Ray, 1986; Van Maanen & Kunda, 1989).

Many writers who focus on ideology come close to what others refer to as clans or cultures, even though the latter concept often is understood as a broader and more complex one. Ideology can be defined as an integrated set of values, ideals, and understandings about a particular part of social reality that justifies certain commitments and actions (see Beyer, 1981; Geertz, 1973; Weiss & Miller, 1987). Sometimes ideology is seen as control (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1988), but typically a rather broad and general concept is used that can cover a wide area of possible forms of more specific control. Ideology is often portrayed as a single traditional conception of management or control. Beckerus, Edström, et al. (1988), for example, argue for a view of management based on ideology (ideas) rather than control through instructions.

A Case for a Middle-Range Theory on Organization and Control

Most authors who write on cultural-ideological forms of control basically rely on a single major concept (culture, ideology, clan, or values). This concept is then complemented by examples of actions, language, social situations, and so on that illustrate how this form of control is exercised. However, most proposals involving cultural-ideological mode(s) of control are based upon an overall concept through which another, traditional control form (i.e., bureaucratic) is confronted.

It can be argued, however, that a grasp of forms of management control that are of a “cultural-ideological” type demands a more elaborated and distinct theory in which variations as well as interrelations between types of control are recognized. This becomes clearer if we consider the richness and scope of the culture concept. There exist a large number of views and definitions of culture. D’Andrade (1984), for example, views culture as “learned systems of meaning, communicated by means of natural language and other symbol systems, having representational, directive and affective functions, and capable of creating cultural entities and particular senses of reality” (p. ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• The International Communication Association
• Series Page
• Introduction
• Section 1: New Views of Organizational Communication: American and European Perspectives
• Section 2: Communication in a Changing World: Technologies and Multi Culturalism
• Section 3: Theory Debate in Interpersonal and Small Group Communication
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Editor
• About the Authors