Reinventing organizational control: Meaning contest surrounding reputational risk controllability in the social media arena

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into how a constellation of actors seek to define, shape, and reinvent the notion of organizational control at the confluence of social media (SM) and corporate reputational risk. Design/methodology/approach - Following the approach suggested by Janesick (1998) and Denzin and Lincoln (1998), the authors undertook an in-depth qualitative analysis of a large number of data sources including interviews, best-selling books by renowned SM specialists, relevant press articles drawn from a Factiva search, and documents published by the Big Four firms and professional accounting institutes in Canada on how organizations should use SM to protect their reputational capital. Findings - Four competing SM reputational risk control perspectives inductively emerged from the analysis: the Beyond Control frame, the Subveillance frame, the De-territorialization frame, and the Re-territorialization frame, with large accounting firms and professional accounting institutes especially promoting the latter. Originality/value - The control literature has been criticized by many scholars as being in urgent need of updating. By inductively theorizing four original control frames in the SM arena, the research aims to move management control research in new directions.

[1]  Steve Morlidge,et al.  Evaluating the completeness and effectiveness of management control systems with cybernetic tools , 2016 .

[2]  John L. J. Machin.  Management Control Systems: Whence and Whither? , 1983 .

[3]  Shelly Rodgers,et al.  Analyzing Health Organizations' Use of Twitter for Promoting Health Literacy , 2013, Journal of health communication.

[4]  Juhani Vaivio,et al.  Qualitative management accounting research: rationale, pitfalls and potential , 2008 .

[5]  Dominique Quessada,et al.  De la sousveillance : La surveillance globale, un nouveau mode de gouvernementalité , 2010 .

[6]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Integrated Information Environment or Matrix of Control?: The Contradictory Implications of Information Technology , 2015 .

[7]  Saul Levmore,et al.  The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation , 2011 .

[8]  Ashlee Humphreys.  Social Media: Enduring Principles , 2015 .

[9]  Robert Newton Anthony,et al.  The management control function , 1988 .

[10]  Henry Mintzberg,et al.  Structure in 5's: A Synthesis of the Research on Organization Design , 1980, Management Science.

[11]  Wim A. Van der Stede,et al.  Measuring 'Tight Budgetary Control' , 2001 .

[12]  Samuel Sponem,et al.  Rationaliser, dominer, discipliner. Une revue des recherches critiques en contrôle de gestion , 2009 .

[13]  Yves Gendron,et al.  In the name of accountability ‐State auditing, independence and new public management , 2001 .

[14]  Tarum Khanna,et al.  Cómo ganar en los mercados emergentes , 2010 .

[15]  Craig E. Carroll.  The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation: Carroll/The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation , 2013 .

[16]  K. Merchant,et al.  The control function of management. , 1982, Sloan management review.

[17]  R. Greenwood,et al.  Sedimentation and Transformation in Organizational Change: The Case of Canadian Law Firms , 1996 .

[18]  M. Power.  Organized Uncertainty: Designing a World of Risk Management , 2007 .

[19]  B. Chae,et al.  Insights from hashtag #supplychain and Twitter Analytics: Considering Twitter and Twitter data for supply chain practice and research , 2015 .

[20]  David Otley,et al.  Emerging themes in management control: a review of recent literature , 2009 .

[21]  K. Weick.  Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination , 1989 .

[22]  Mahfud Sholihin,et al.  Fairness in performance evaluation and its behavioural consequences , 2009 .

[23]  Dominic L. Lasorsa,et al.  NORMALIZING TWITTER , 2012 .

[24]  C. Dambrin.  Le Contrôle à distance ou l'autocontrôle par les technologies : le cas des commerciaux , 2005 .

[25]  Henri Bouquin.  Les fondements du contrôle de gestion , 2005 .

[26]  D. Trottier,et al.  Surveillance and/of nature: monitoring beyond the human , 2015 .

[27]  M. Alvesson,et al.  Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the appropriate individual , 2002 .

[28]  Craig E. Carroll.  The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation , 2015 .

[29]  T. Tinker,et al.  The Struggle Over Meaning in Accounting and Corporate Research: A Comparative Evaluation of Conservative and Critical Historiography , 1988 .

[30]  Hugh Willmott,et al.  THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ELIMINATING THE EXPECTATIONS GAP: SOME THEORY AND EVIDENCE , 1998 .

[31]  E. Guba,et al.  Naturalistic inquiry: Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1985, 416 pp., $25.00 (Cloth) , 1985 .

[32]  R. Chenhall.  Management control systems design within its organizational context: findings from contingency-based research and directions for the future , 2003 .

[33]  Mike Bourne,et al.  Managing through Uncertainty , 2014 .

[34]  Michael Power,et al.  The risk management of everything , 2004 .

[35]  P. J. Arnold,et al.  The Contemporary Discourse on Health Care Cost: Conflicting Meanings and Meaningful Conflicts , 1994 .

[36]  Chaim Noy,et al.  Sampling Knowledge: The Hermeneutics of Snowball Sampling in Qualitative Research , 2008 .

[37]  David Godes,et al.  Introduction to the Special Issue - Social Media and Business Transformation: A Framework for Research , 2013, Inf. Syst. Res..

[38]  Michel Lebas,et al.  MANAGEMENT CONTROL: THE ROLES OF RULES, MARKETS AND CULTURE[1] , 1986 .

[39]  Thomas Ahrens,et al.  Accounting for Flexibility and Efficiency: A Field Study of Management Control Systems in a Restaurant Chain , 2004 .

[40]  B. Flyvbjerg,et al.  Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again , 2001 .

[41]  Daniel J. Solove.  The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet , 2007 .

[42]  C. Huber,et al.  Management Control and Uncertainty: Risk Management in Universities , 2014 .

[43]  Siriyama Kanthi Herath.  A framework for management control research , 2007 .

[44]  Argimiro Arratia,et al.  Forecasting with twitter data , 2013, ACM Trans. Intell. Syst. Technol..

[45]  Alnoor Bhimani,et al.  Risk management, corporate governance and management accounting: Emerging interdependencies , 2009 .

[46]  Bernhard Rieder.  Networked Control: Search Engines and the Symmetry of Confidence , 2005 .

[47]  Aldónio Ferreira,et al.  Does consistency in management control systems design choices influence firm performance? An empirical analysis , 2014 .

[48]  Michael L. Siciliano.  Disappearing into the Object: Aesthetic Subjectivities and Organizational Control in Routine Cultural Work , 2016 .

[49]  Thomas Ahrens,et al.  Accounting and Organizations: Realizing the Richness of Field Research , 1998 .

[50]  Bernard J. Jansen,et al.  Twitter power: Tweets as electronic word of mouth , 2009 .

[51]  Stuart Hall.  Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. , 1997 .

[52]  Paul F. Williams,et al.  The winnowing away of behavioral accounting research in the US: The process for anointing academic elites , 2006 .

[53]  Johan Bollen,et al.  Twitter mood predicts the stock market , 2010, J. Comput. Sci..

[54]  K. Merchant.  Control in business organizations , 1987 .

[55]  Charles J. Fombrun,et al.  Reputation: Realizing Value from the Corporate Image , 1996 .

[56]  Paula van Veen-Dirks,et al.  Constraining and Facilitating Management Control in Times of Austerity : Case studies in Four Municipal Departments , 2015 .

[57]  M. Patton.  Qualitative evaluation and research methods, 2nd ed. , 1990 .

[58]  Christopher M. Danforth,et al.  Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network: Hedonometrics and Twitter , 2011, PloS one.

[59]  William G. Ouchi,et al.  Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans. , 1980 .

[60]  Clinton Free,et al.  Annexing new audit spaces: challenges and adaptations , 2015 .

[61]  Michael Power,et al.  The apparatus of fraud risk , 2013 .

[62]  Michele Zappavigna,et al.  Ambient affiliation: A linguistic perspective on Twitter , 2011, New Media Soc..

[63]  Marion Brivot,et al.  Constructing, Contesting, and Overloading: A Study of Risk Management Framing , 2017 .

[64]  C. Fuchs.  Social Media: A Critical Introduction , 2013 .

[65]  A. Edmondson,et al.  METHODOLOGICAL FIT IN MANAGEMENT FIELD RESEARCH. , 2007 .

[66]  É. Maigret.  Sociologie de la communication et des médias , 2015 .

[67]  H. Willmott.  STRENGTH IS IGNORANCE; SLAVERY IS FREEDOM: MANAGING CULTURE IN MODERN ORGANIZATIONS* , 1993 .

[68]  Sally K. Widener,et al.  The Levers of Control Framework: An exploratory analysis of balance , 2016 .

[69]  A. Hopwood,et al.  Accounting and human behaviour , 1976 .

[70]  Eliot Freidson,et al.  Professionalism: The Third Logic , 2001 .

[71]  C. Fuchs.  What Is Social Media , 2014 .

[72]  Denise M. English,et al.  Levers of Control , 1996 .

[73]  D. Otley,et al.  Research in Management Control: An Overview of its Development , 1995 .

[74]  Ulf-Dietrich Reips,et al.  "Big Data" : big gaps of knowledge in the field of internet science , 2012 .

[75]  D. Lyon.  Surveillance Studies: An Overview , 2007 .

[76]  George E. Rejda,et al.  Insurance and risk , 1964 .

[77]  Frank G. H. Hartmann,et al.  The appropriateness of RAPM: Toward the further development of theory , 2000 .

[78]  W. Ouchi.  The Relationship Between Organizational Structure and Organizational Control. , 1977 .

[79]  Valerie J. Janesick.  The dance of qualitative research design: Metaphor, methodolatry, and meaning. , 1994 .

[80]  D. Otley,et al.  The effects of the interactive use of management control systems on product innovation , 2004 .

[81]  D. Hartmann,et al.  Triangulated Research Designs — A Justification? , 2005 .

[82]  C. Grey,et al.  ‘We Can Tell Them to Get Lost, but We Won’t Do That’: Cultural Control and Resistance in Voluntary Work , 2016 .

[83]  Timothy G. Pollock,et al.  The Oxford handbook of corporate reputation , 2012 .

[84]  G. Hazard,,et al.  Regulatory Controls on Large Law Firms: A Comparative Perspective , 2002 .

[85]  Petra Theunissen,et al.  Reputations at risk: Engagement during social media crises , 2015 .

[86]  Pascal Langevin,et al.  La Justice : un revenant au pays du Contrôle ? , 2013 .

[87]  Kim Soin,et al.  Reputational Risk as a Logic of Organizing in Late Modernity , 2009 .

[88]  Joseph A. Raelin,et al.  The basis for the professional's resistance to managerial control , 1985 .