Whitaker Ideas Forum: Management control systems as a battleground

Recent literature has explored the capacity of technical and socio-ideological controls to support the expression and management of healthy tension and conflict in organisations, and the achievement of balance and negotiated resolutions. Using an in-depth case study of a local government in France, where a socialist and green party coalition replaced a long standing communist administration, this paper examines the role and use of a multiplicity of control systems in the context of competing political coalitions, intent on ‘winning’ rather than compromise. We extend theoretical understandings of how assemblages of controls are implicated in environments characterised by political contests, through proliferation, sedimentation and reconstruction of the architecture of the control systems, as they are used as a battleground between competing political coalitions.

This is one of a series of seminars in the Whitaker Ideas Forum. Emer will be representing the Performance Management Research cluster.

The Whitaker Ideas Forum is a weekly seminar, running Wednesday’s throughout the semester from 1:00pm-2:00pm in CA110. It provides the opportunity for members of the Institute to showcase their research. The result are presentations that highlight the diversity of the research being undertaken, while allowing for an opportunity to engage in discussions and, sometimes, collaboration with attendees. Below, you will find a list of this semester’s seminars, please click the title for more information on that seminar.