The Effectiveness of Organizational Controls: A meta-analytic review and an investigation in NPD outsourcing

Organizational controls have been recognized as an important aspect of the managers’ organizational life. Managers exercise organizational controls to direct and motivate employees and external partners to behave in desired ways. The extant research on the effectiveness of outcome, behavior, and clan control remains equivocal. This dissertation therefore focuses on two research objectives that aims to improve the understanding related to the behavioral and performance consequences of outcome, behavior, and clan control. The first research objective was to meta-analyze the relationship between the three organizational controls and performance along with their performance effects in combination. The second research objective was to investigate the behavioral and performance consequences of the three organizational controls in NPD outsourcing.

The two research objectives were met by conducting three empirical studies. The first study elucidates the relationships of outcome, behavior, and clan control with various performance outcomes, as well as that they act as complements. The second study reveals the effect of outcome, behavior, and clan control on supplier flexibility in NPD outsourcing, and what effect this has on NPD project performance. The third study examines whether the three organizational controls can influence a supplier to adhere to the specified prescriptions such that it sometimes does not use its own idiosyncratic expertise (supplier mechanical compliance), and also restrict the intrinsic motivation of the supplier in NPD outsourcing.

Collectively, this dissertation informs managers and scholars about the behavioral and performance consequences of exercising organizational controls, both, in general and NPD outsourcing.