Management Control Practices in Organizations [PhD Project]

Research in this area would focus on understanding how management control emerges and functions, aiming to extend the current knowledge of the antecedents, nature, and consequences of control in organizations.

Admission requirements: • a strong first degree (UK level 2.1 minimum) • please see website for English language requirements.

Deadlines: • applications for scholarships – mid-April.

Expressions of interest, alongside a CV, are invited via email to andrey.pavlov@cranfield.ac.uk in the first instance.

See full details on our website.

The era of top-down hierarchical performance management and management control frameworks is over, and the research evaluating their impact does not provide any conclusive evidence of such. There are just as many studies documenting the positive effect of performance management systems on performance as there are those that show that such an effect is absent or even negative. It is clear that we need new approaches both to designing performance management and management control systems and to evaluating their effectiveness.

The practice perspective with its focus on the actual practices in which people engage provides an alternative – and perhaps a more fruitful – way of examining the functions and mechanisms of management control in organizations. Control then becomes something that people in organizations do rather than something that organizations have or implement (cf. Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). This perspective allows us to ask such questions as: What is the real source of control in organizations? How does performance management and management control get interpreted and enacted by people in organizations? What underpins success and failure of performance management initiatives? What are the limits of management control?

Strong candidate sought to study antecedents, nature and consequences of control in organizations.

Supervisors: Dr Andrey Pavlov & Professor Cliff Bowman

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www.cranfield.ac.uk/som/phd