Antecedents and Consequences of Standard-Based Control Systems

This paper develops the tests a standard-based control system model which consists of three interrelated controls-participative standard setting, standard-based incentives, and standard tightness-as well as selected antecedents (task variety, task analyzability, information asymmetry) and consequences (job stress and job performance). Drawing primarily on the agency-theory and person-environment fit literatures, six hypotheses are developed. One hypothesis was not tested due to poor measurement reliability. The remaining five hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling on data collected from a sample of 385 Japanese automobile design engineers. The tests supported four of these hypotheses. The tests indicated that superior-subordinate information asymmetry is positively associated with the use of participative standard setting which, in turn, is positively associated with performance standard slack (=standard-based incentives minus standard tightness). Increases in performance standard slack are associated with decreases in job stress which, in turn, is negatively associated with job performance.