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The Anglo‐American debates on corporate governance that have taken place over the last two decades have been largely confined to shareholder theory, which is the dominant perspective, and stakeholder theory, which is its main challenger. The shareholder theory of corporate governance is discussed in Sect. 2.2 of the chapter, which argues that the theory precludes an understanding of the nature of corporate governance required for innovation as a result of its failure to incorporate a systematic analysis of innovation, and more generally, of production, in its conceptual framework. Rather, taking its lead from neoclassical economics (as discussed in Sect. 2.3), it regards economic activity as synonymous with exchange and, as a result, conceives of resource allocation as a transaction that is reversible, individual, and optimal. In the academic arena, one of the most sophisticated proponents of the stakeholder argument is Margaret Blair, an economist at the Brookings Institution, and her arguments are addressed in the discussion of the stakeholder theory of corporate governance in Section 2.3. The last main section of the chapter, Sect. 2.4, discusses organizational control theory––its logic, the theory in relation to innovation, and its institutional foundations.

This chapter argues that organisational control and accounting’s role in it has become an increasingly digitised and technologically enabled process. New centres of calculation have emerged within post-industrial organisations which, in turn, are facilitating more disembedded and intensified forms of accounting control. This post-industrial phenomenon of organisational control is examined by drawing on a case study of an Australian call centre.

This chapter summarizes the key points raised by the book, with particular emphasis on questions of organizational control, party-building, and party strength in Congress. It begins with a discussion of the role that the party caucus has played in hastening a consistent House organization by the majority party. It then considers the organizational cartel's relationship with the procedural cartel and the applicability of the organizational cartel mechanism in other legislatures, including the U.S. Senate, American state legislatures, and parliaments around the world. The chapter also examines Martin van Buren's legacy, focusing on his role in developing the organizational capacity of the Democratic Party and his efforts in building the American party system, before concluding with some final thoughts on political parties and congressional organization.

In recent decades the institutional foundations of organizational control in Germany have proven to be more enduring than those in the USA, but, nevertheless various pressures have built up on the German system of corporate governance that raise questions about its sustainability in its current form. Some of these pressures emanate from sources external to the operation of the domestic corporate economy, such as the processes of European integration and German reunification, but the more powerful pressures reflect financial and productive challenges that are integrally related to the evolving political economy of the German corporate sector. First, pressures for financial liquidity have increased; as Germans have grown wealthier, they have been moving their savings out of bank deposits and into more market‐based instruments, a trend that is likely to lead to increased demands for higher returns on corporate securities; these pressures are discussed in Sect. 8.2. The second formidable challenge to the German system of organizational control, that posed by international competition, especially from Japan, is discussed in Sect. 8.3; the Japanese competitive challenge is fundamentally an organizational one since it confronts the social foundations on which German enterprises have successfully competed in the past even in high‐quality niches in which they have previously been unrivalled. Together, and in combination with forces external to the German economy, these structural changes in the German economy (the one financial, the other productive) may challenge the foundations of the post‐war system of corporate governance; Sect. 8.4 documents some of the political responses to these challenges from key interest groups and, in particular, labour and financial interests in the German economy; Sect. 8.5 concludes by drawing out some of the possible implications of these responses for the future of German corporate governance.

Like its US counterpart, the characteristic features of the post‐war system of corporate governance in the former West Germany have deep roots in the region's history. Section 7.2 of this chapter analyses the evolution of managerial control in pre‐war Germany and identifies its central institutional foundations as inter‐company shareholding and bank–industry relations. Section 7.3 describes how these institutions persisted in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) after the war, although through the institution of co‐determination, the post‐war system of corporate governance was transformed beyond its narrow pre‐war confines into a contested form of organizational control; in shaping control over corporate resource allocation, these social conditions were complemented by institutions––especially the dual system of apprenticeship––that supported the organizational integration of resources in German business enterprises. Section 7.3 further discusses how, on the basis of the system of governance that supported organizational control, German companies achieved considerable success in industrial sectors in which high quality was more important than low cost as a basis for competitive advantage; it also analyses how the type of organizational control that emerged in the post‐war period influenced the distribution of wealth in the economy. The last main section, Sect. 7.4, discusses corporate governance in relation to performance.

Given the centrality of the process of innovation to the performance of dynamic economies, the types of corporate governance that will promote economic performance can be determined only within a conceptual framework that integrates an analysis of the economics of innovation. In Sect. 1.2, theoretical and empirical research on the economics of innovation is reviewed in order to identify the key stylized facts of the process through which resources are developed and utilized in the economy; innovation is specifically characterized as a process that is cumulative, collective, and uncertain. In Sect. 1.3, it is argued that these characteristics imply that innovation requires an allocation process that is (1) developmental––resources must be committed to irreversible investments with uncertain returns, (2) organizational––returns are generated through the integration of human and physical resources, and (3) strategic––resources are allocated to overcome market and technological conditions that other firms take as given. In Sect. 1.4, the critical characteristics of innovative resource allocation are contrasted with neoclassical resource allocation, which is reversible, individual, and optimal. Section 1.5 discusses the relationships between resource allocation and corporate governance, emphasizing that in spite of continuing attempts by heterodox economists to introduce one or more of the characteristics of resource allocation discussed in Sect. 1.4 to a theory of economic performance (in particular, developmental, organizational, and strategic characteristics), it is only by taking all of these characteristics together that the profound implications they have for the governance of corporations can be seen, implying the need for organizational control over the allocation of resources in the economy.

The empirical analysis of the US and German systems of corporate governance presented in this book has highlighted the prevalence of organizational control across industry and over time. In both cases, the institutional foundations for organizational control were laid in the late nineteenth century, yet the comparison of the systems of governance reveals that they have taken very different forms in these two countries, with important economic and political repercussions. Furthermore, governance institutions in both the USA and Germany have evolved substantially, so that in both cases the essence of organizational control has changed considerably over the course of the twentieth century. The book has tried to illustrate the advantages of the organizational control theory for understanding the complex interaction between institutions of corporate governance and economic performance across countries and over time, and has argued that it is only by taking seriously the dynamics of enterprises and economies, that the relationship between corporate governance and corporate performance as it has existed and as it is evolving can be understood. However, there is a need for much more detailed empirical analysis in order to understand the economic logic of systems of corporate governance, and the need for further research can be identified at various levels of analysis, which are discussed.

The question of how corporations should be governed to enhance corporate and economic performance has been widely discussed in the last two decades in the USA and the UK, but until recently, the subject of corporate governance has attracted much less attention on the European continent, in Asia, and in other parts of the world. By the late 1990s, however, corporate governance had become a major, and highly contentious, issue in all of the advanced economies and, increasingly, in developing countries as well. International organizations, including the OECD, the World Bank, and the IMF have devoted increasing attention to corporate governance as a topic of global concern. The starting point for the analysis of corporate resource allocation and its governance presented in this book is a concern with the dynamics of enterprise and economic performance, and central to the process through which successful enterprises and economies improve their performance over time, as well as relative to each other, is a phenomenon that can broadly be termed ’innovation’; the term is used here in a general sense to include all activities that enterprises and economies undertake to deliver higher‐quality and/or cheaper products, i.e. it has a distinctly commercial connotation, and in particular, is not reducible to technological novelty. The particular focus of the book is a comparison of the historical development of systems of corporate governance in the USA and Germany, and given the pervasive influence of the US system as a model of corporate governance in contemporary academic and policy debates, an especially detailed historical analysis of the evolution and influence of governance institutions in that country has been done; this reveals the value of the organizational control framework for understanding the economics of corporate governance in the USA, and highlights the serious deficiencies of alternative theoretical treatments of the contemporary US system that have often led to what, in historical perspective, are serious misunderstandings of its essential elements.

This chapter seeks to expand the domain of management accounting and organizational control research into creative industries, and develop a framework for studying perhaps the best known of these industries — motion pictures. It discusses both traditional and emerging issues in-context that managerial accountants ordinarily address in most organizations across a diversity of industries. These include issues of performance evaluation, incentives, contracting, strategic assessment, value chain analysis, budgetary systems, cost control, cost behaviour, and profit analyses. The framework for achieving this focuses on the US motion picture industry, which has the longest history and is the most developed film industry globally.

This chapter examines a mechanism called lateral control regime, which is based on a counter-intuitive complementarity between niche seeking and status competition. It helps most peers exercise early monitoring and sanctioning by reducing their individual costs of control. The complex relational pattern reflecting the lateral control regime is simplified and made visible by the aggregation of individual choices of ‘levers’ (or ‘sanctioners’) — that is, envoys of the firm in charge of pressuring deviant partners back to good conduct. The study of the firm's lateral control regime shows that it is based on both the existence of niches and the concentration of lateral control in the hands of a few partners with a specific form of status, whom the rest of the partnership often chose as levers. The chapter describes the role and characteristics of these main levers, the social ‘territory’ in which each of them was expected to exercise control, and how they were expected to control each other.

Communication, information, and organizational control are tightly entwined; this chapter explores the theoretical literature that elaborates on these concepts. The early years of car phones and cell phones were a time when people used their devices to reach others. But that changed as smartphones—those with Internet access—started diffusing into organizations and throughout society. Now, people with those same devices could access data and share information in addition to communicating. This chapter focuses on a process perspective on organizational control and links the data from Chapters 1 and 2 to the concepts of agentic, hierarchical, and concertive control. Longitudinal data help illustrate how control is fluid and how these changes resemble a tug-of-war. Control is related to power, so it also discusses different types of power. Often organizations control resources, like mobile information and communication technologies, so power and control might work together in mobile communication.

This chapter provides a conceptual framework to understand the processes, relevant to self-conscious emotions, through which social workers come to acquiesce or resist organisational attempts at control. It first outlines the research on compliance and resistance in social work practice before developing and extending these ideas through the analysis of pride and shame in professional practice. Drawing on Oliver’s (1991) analysis of strategic responses within organisations to wider institutional processes, how social workers perform professional practice in the context of organisational attempts at control, and the strategies that social workers employ to manage the organisational pressures, expectations and demands, are outlined. While some social workers can actively identify with the organisational representation in the moment, motivating them to enact its meanings and expectations, some reluctantly identify with it as a defensive strategy to avoid being shamed and humiliated, motivating them to comply despite reservation. However, some social workers, in some contexts, resist the organisational representation, feeling unable to comply, and, therefore, seek to compromise what they are expected to do, conceal their acts of resistance or influence the source of organisational attempts at control.

The chapter describes the amount of peer control that all Wikipedians experience, the Panopticon-like recording of all behaviors, and the control of participation through a high degree of regulation and procedures. It explains how the iron cage of bureaucracy on Wikipedia is tightening as a result of the community's need to stratify users and to create barriers to entry for newcomers. It shows that the bureaucratic creed is only one of Wikipedia's many ways of introducing informal strategies of domination and differentiation of user status.

This chapter argues that the divergent attitudes and behaviors of ordinary soldiers are best explained by variation in organizational control, which made some forms and targets of violence appropriate in the eyes of combatants. It examines the role of organizational control processes in producing “strategic violence.” It also uses the term “strategic” to indicate what soldiers perceive as strategic, based on the existence of clear orders and on the fact that certain practices are intended to serve military rather than individual goals. The chapter highlights the often-overlooked fact that organizational efforts must be invested not only in curbing violence but also in producing it. It also analyzes the trajectory of control in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with efforts to shape and direct the disparate interests of Israeli youth before enlistment, military training, and operational deployment.

This chapter extends the theory of pride and shame in professional practice by considering how pride, shame and other self-conscious emotions are strategically used to regulate the emotions of the social workers to alter not just what they do and how they do it, but also who they are. It develops the idea of organisational control by conceptualising pride and shame as central to this process. It is argued that it is through the regulation of employee emotions, and specifically through self-conscious emotions, that what people do, how they do it and how they define themselves can be shaped, influenced and manipulated. Organisational leaders and managers can be seen to regulate the emotions of the social workers directly, and therefore their identities indirectly, so that they perform the ‘appropriate’ tasks, in the ‘appropriate’ way, at the ‘appropriate’ time. After considering the theory of regulating the emotions of social workers, this chapter returns to the case example used throughout the book to take a deeper look at these processes in practice.

Chapter 4 describes the ‘New Age’ management ideas and ‘subjective’ techniques of organizational control that have been imported into the Indian IT industry, especially the promotion of ‘flat structures’, an informal work culture, and employee autonomy. It argues that the ideology of ‘soft’ management provides a powerful discursive framework through which actors interpret their experiences at work and fashion their selves and lives beyond work. The chapter examines how these ‘indirect’ management practices shape sociality in the workplace and the subjectivities of IT workers, how software engineers negotiate with the relations of power and forms of subjectification that the encounter at work, and how they navigate these complex workspaces while pursuing their own projects of self-fashioning and mobility. The chapter also addresses the question of power, agency, and identity in IT workspaces through an examination of the micro-politics of teamwork and the cultural politics of outsourcing.

For many people, whose first experiences using mobiles were between 2000 and 2010, it’s hard to imagine a time when friends and loved ones didn’t have mobiles or when people didn’t have access to one another after work hours. This chapter opens in California with a story of Los Angeles traffic; it was terrible, even back in 1990. Some companies wanted to make their mobile staff more productive, so they provided them with car phones—permanently mounted, fairly large phones with an antenna attached to the back window. Organizations paid for these “business tools”; and they were company property, just like a computer. During these initial years, some early adopters of new technology started bringing tools, like tablet computers and personal digital assistants, to work. This chapter sets the stage for understanding how and why negotiations for control over mobile communication emerged.