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This paper aims to advance understanding of the role of informal controls for governing day-to-day interactions in the execution phase of interfirm collaborations. It explores the nature of these informal controls and how they are used by the firm’s partners during this phase.

In-depth case study of a lateral relationship between a car manufacturer and its suppliers, based on interviews, observations and archival material, and using concepts from the field of psychology.

The results reveal an interfirm collaboration in which the supplier, in particular, relies on so-called informal interpersonal controls for micro-contracting and solving the control problems of its day-to-day interactions. Specifically, the study finds that the collaboration partners rely on interpersonal influence tactics for influencing behavior, coordinating the activities of the collaboration partners, and mitigating collaborative risks. Depending on the specific individual, in terms of, for example, their “mood”, and the contingencies of the explicit interaction, such as contradicting flanking contractual agreements, the actors engage in different activities, including ingratiation, pressure or rational persuasion.

This study illuminates the role of informal controls in interfirm settings by distinguishing analytically between interpersonal and interorganizational informal controls. By mobilizing the psychological concepts of interpersonal influence tactics, the extant research in this field is complemented through the illustration of how the actors use informal control mechanisms, depending on their corresponding counterpart, and the specific situation of the interaction. The findings thereby highlight the situated nature of governance, suggesting that governance between collaboration partners is not a static condition, rather an ongoing process in which the actors use, and alternate between, distinct tactics in their daily interactions.

This survey study among 111 teleworkers in a bank organization investigated the relationship between telework intensity and individual productivity, and whether this relationship was mediated by employees’ intrinsic motivation. Also the moderating role of office hours in the model’s associations was studied. Based on the Job Demands-Resources Model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) and the professional isolation literature (e.g., Golden, Vega, & Dino, 2008), we developed and tested a set of hypotheses. Partly in line with expectations, we found a direct curvilinear relationship between telework intensity and individual productivity, characterized by a slight, non-significant positive association at the low telework intensity end, and a significant negative association for the high telework intensity end. Strikingly, we neither found support for a mediating role of intrinsic motivation, nor for a moderation effect of the number of office hours in the relationship between telework intensity and intrinsic motivation. However, the direct relationship between telework intensity and individual productivity appeared to be moderated by the number of office hours. It was concluded that consequences for productivity are contingent on telework intensity, and that the number of office hours has an important impact on the consequences of different telework intensities. The study’s outcomes can inform management and HR practitioners to understand how to implement and appropriately make use of telework.

The discussion about public sector performance is still present today, despite the profound research that has already tried to address this subject. Furthermore, theory links negative effects on organizational performance with increased levels of organizational complexity. However, literature thus far did not succeed to put forward a successful theory that explains why and how public organizations became increasingly complex. To answer this question, we argue that increased organizational complexity can be explained by viewing public organizations as the hybrid result of different institutional logics, which are shaped by various management views. However, former research mainly concentrated on the separate study of management views such as traditional public management (TPM), NPM, and post-NPM. Although appealing, research that approaches hybridity from this perspective is fairly limited.

We conducted a literature review in which we studied 80 articles about traditional public management, NPM, and post-NPM.

We found that these management views essentially differ on the base of three fault lines, depending on the level of the organizational culture. These fault lines, according to the management view, together result in nine dimensions. By combing dimensions of the different management views, we argue that a public organization becomes hybrid. Furthermore, in line with findings of contingency theory, we explain the level of hybridity might depend on the level of tight coupling for a given organization. Finally, we developed propositions that explain hybridity as the result of isomorphic forces, organizational change, and organizational resistance to change and that link hybridization with processes of selective coupling.

The value of this chapter lies in its real-life applicability.

This paper aims to advance recent literature on the performativity of accounting by examining how project accounting affects a project organization’s ability to deliver a relevant project outcome, such as a product or a building, for a receiving client organization.

The paper draws on a longitudinal case study of a 41.4-billion-kroner (5.5-billion-euro) Danish project of constructing 16 new public hospitals. Its objective was to reduce the average unit costs and improve the quality of patient care. Each hospital construction was managed by a separate project organization and handed over to a separate receiving hospital organization. The project organizations applied a common approach to project accounting. The paper relies on Michel Callon’s concepts of performativity and sociotechnical agencement – approaching project accounting as an arrangement of devices.

The paper shows that the project-accounting agencement simultaneously supported and undermined the project organizations’ ability to deliver hospitals relevant to the receiving hospital organizations. The agencement performed hospital designs, disciplined project actors and guided decision-making, thus supporting the overall work of the project organizations. It also, however, compelled the project organizations to compromise on hospital designs when unexpected events occurred. These compromises led to the delivery of hospitals, which largely prevented the receiving hospital organizations from achieving the project’s objective.

This paper advances our limited understanding of the dynamic and complex relationship between project accounting and the relevance of project outcomes. It introduces the concept of a “contronymity device” to capture the way project accounting simultaneously produces two opposing consequences, both supporting and undermining the enactment of a particular reality. The paper lastly enriches our understanding of how project-accounting devices impact hospital organizations’ operating cost structures and challenge patient care capabilities.

This paper looks into the mechanisms that determine (stimulate and limit) the scope for loyal contradiction in organizations through ex ante voice. The paper provides insights into how this essential civil service function and obligation can be maintained and the role that public leadership can play in addressing these issues.

This paper consists of a conceptual analysis of major determinants for constraints on and stimuli of loyal contradiction and provides an interpretational framework of the relevant factors involved.

This paper examines the mechanisms that determine (stimulate and limit) the scope for loyal contradiction in organizations through ex ante voice and provides insights into how to maintain this essential civil service function and obligation through the contribution of public leadership.

The findings of this paper offer insight into how to avoid constraints on loyal contradiction within public organizations and point to the way public leaders can, by facilitating and stimulating it, enhance organizational performance and legitimacy.

This paper points to an issue that is increasingly relevant in politics and public administration. By providing a conceptual framework, this paper provides a deeper understanding of how the necessary conditions for loyal contradiction can be created within public organizations.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

The purpose of this paper is to test forward-looking incentives against backward-looking incentives.

Wage growth model to estimate forward-looking effects of unpaid overtime and a probit model of participation in unpaid overtime controlling for excessive pay to estimate backward-looking effects. The authors use data form the OSA labour supply panel (years 1994, 1996 and 1998).

The importance of backward-looking incentives is demonstrated in an empirical analysis of participation in unpaid overtime. The authors show that employees who have relatively good wages now or who have had relatively good wages in the recent past participate more often in unpaid overtime. The authors also show that participation in unpaid overtime does not lead to extra wage growth.

These results imply that involvement in unpaid overtime is to be explained from backward-looking incentives, not from forward-looking incentives. The paper concludes that backward-looking incentives deserve more attention in the economic literature, especially as they are well-accepted as work motivation devices by employees. Limitations are the length of the panel study (four years) and the fact that the data are restricted to one country (the Netherlands).

Personnel policies should focus more on the intrinsic motivation of personnel rather than on extrinsic motivation.

This is the first paper to test both forward- and backward-looking incentives simultaneously.

This chapter presents the key results of a research project that explored managing service productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of lived experiences of bank executives employed as ‘knowledge workers’ in the Nigerian banking sector. The study adopted a qualitative phenomenological research design. Data was gathered from 16 Nigerian top bank executives purposively selected using semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Trans Positional Cognition Approach (TPCA), a new phenomenological research method, was used to analyse the data gathered. The study data analysis yielded five themes; micromanagement practices, use of dysfunctional strategies to drive service operations, deposit mobilisation target as a productivity measure, managerial indifference to potential nescience economy issues and master-servant (power culture) strategy, which epitomises fundamental managerial approaches adopted in the sector. The study identified critical service productivity management issues grounded in reality that influence the capability and potentiality of the study knowledge workers. It also contributes the novel, ‘official knowledge worker lived experience of service productivity model’ for use by decision-makers in the banking sector. Thus, it sets an agenda for these ‘knowledge workers’ line managers’ and bank regulators in the research setting. The study extended the viable system model by applying it in this phenomenological enquiry and using it to explain/deepen our understanding of the findings that emerged. The output of this work contributes to scholarly knowledge on service productivity management from the sub-Saharan African banks’ perspective. It can be generalisable in countries with similar financial and economic characteristics like the research setting.