The complementarity of control formalization and control flexibility: The contingent effects of competitive turbulence

Feifei Yang, George A Shinkle and Mirjam Goudsmit
Additional contact information
Feifei Yang: Asia Europe Business School, Faculty of Economics and Management, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
George A Shinkle: UNSW Business School, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Mirjam Goudsmit: Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Australian Journal of Management, 2022, vol. 47, issue 4, 773-792

Abstract: We examine how the complementarity of control formalization and control flexibility influences organizational performance across contexts of varying competitive turbulence. We build contingency arguments anchored in the efficiency logic of control theory and investigate both the restrictive and facilitative views of control formalization. Our empirical evidence is based on a survey of top executives from 536 organizations across the United States, Australia, China, and Israel. We find that control formalization and control flexibility are complementary in environments of low competitive turbulence. With increasing turbulence, the complementarity diminishes and shifts toward substitutive effects. JEL Classification: L2

Keywords: Competitive turbulence; control flexibility; control formalization; control theory; organizational control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03128962211067648 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ausman:v:47:y:2022:i:4:p:773-792

DOI: 10.1177/03128962211067648

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Australian Journal of Management from Australian School of Business
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().