INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND COST CONTROL

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Management Control as a Bridging Concept

Despite their often overlapping subject areas, management science and social science reveal only occasional promise of a fruitful interlink. However, recent developments in the study of managerial control suggest that this problematic could well be used as a suitable bridge

The Means of Management Control

In the understanding of managerial control over work, the labour process literature has been very influential. Recent critical contributions from the sociological tradition have, however, served to so fragment the underlying perspective that its coherence is now threatened. This paper seeks to demonstrate how a dialectical analysis can lay the basis for a viable amended approach. The need for a dialectical framework has often been urged - illustrations of such a perspective in operation, however, are rare. Using a series of examples, this paper argues that the dialectic of work control can be revealed by focussing on two phenomena: the 'levels' and 'circuits' of control