Management control systems and organizational development: New directions for managing work teams

Aims to apply organizational systems perspectives to discuss the three types of organizational development (OD) and management control systems (MCS): normative, coercive and remunerative‐instrumental (utilitarian) that affect the operating performance of teams.

The paper examines the effect that managerial power relations, cultural process and structural change intervention of these three types of control systems have on the formation (size, composition, and strategies), and operational activities (functions and assignment of tasks) of teams. The paper uses library archives research to study OD, MCS and teams. It has applied an organizational systems perspective that examines the effects of OD and MCS on teams' management.

Recent new directions in management control systems and OD process and structural intervention strategies have transformed management accounting control systems as the new administrative control innovations mechanisms for managing teams' performance and activities in industrial organizations. Accordingly, the traditional mechanistic control approach has been substituted or replaced by organic‐based processes and structures of team‐based control systems.

In organizations, the management of teams is multi‐dimensional, involving the simultaneous use of normative, remunerative and coercive control mechanisms. The paper advances the views that the effectiveness of team management in organizations is contingent upon several structural and process factors including the mix of these three types of compliance systems and the form of organizational setting, i.e. manufacturing or professional organizations.

In the management control literature, the management of teams has centered on normative or remunerative or coercive control systems. This paper shows that OD's cultural process and structural intervention strategies provide new directions to address these three types of management control system for teams in industrial organizations.