An Information Processing Approach for Deciding Upon Control Strategies and Reducing Control Loss in Emerging Organizations

Control in emerging organizations is becoming increasingly problematic due to the need for increasing employee discretion of behavior stemming from greater uncertainty of how to accomplish tasks. Traditional control processes, based on the use of rules and supervision, are largely ineffective for effectively controlling behavior where there is uncertainty and ambiguity about how to successfully carry out tasks. This problem is approached here from an information processing perspective. Our contention is that effective control of tasks, that is, assuring goal attainment, is the result of linking the information processing (IP) requirements of tasks with information processing capabilities of three control strategies: objective controls, normative controls and self-management. A set of propositions are proposed suggesting that as IP requirements increase, there is greater reliance on normative and self-management control strategies for effective task completion. However, these high IP capability strategies will be effective only to the extent that the opportunity for control loss inherent in these strategies is reduced through investments in bonding and trust.