Organisational Control: a Resource Dependence Approach

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to present some ideas concerning the interactions between an organisation and the environment in which it operates and to demonstrate the implications of these ideas for the design of management control systems. The importance of environmental contingenices for organisations and their management control systems is widely acknowledged (see, for example, Bruns and Waterhouse, 1975; Hayes, 1977; Waterhouse and Tiessen, 1978), and this literature points towards an analytical framework which includes the whole range of control mechanisms within the organisation rather than management accounting controls in isolation (Otley, 1981). Much attention has been focused on structural considerations, such as how best to organise in order to cope with the effects of complexity and unpredictability in the environment (for example, Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967b; Gordon and Miller, 1976; Amigoni, 1978), though rather less has been written about the mechanics of that coping process (but see Weick, 1969; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978).