Control Mechanisms Portfolios in Project Based Industrial Organizations: Analysing the Impact on Knowledge Creation

This paper studies the interplay of control mechanisms in project based industrial organizations in order to understand what is their impact on knowledge creation processes at teams’ level. Extant literature has shown that organizations may avail themselves of a variety of different coordination and control mechanisms to be deployed simultaneously (Okhuysen and Bechky, 2009; Whyte and Levitt, 2011, van Donk and Molloy, 2009). Building on previous studies internal to the traditional dichotomy formal/bureaucratic vs. informal control modes (Kirsch, 1997; Nieminen and Lehtonen, 2008) we identify a portfolio of outcome-based, behaviour-based, clan-based and self-based control mechanisms in project based organizations. Our analysis aims at showing to what extent the choice among control mechanisms can influence knowledge creation processes taking place at teams level and what is the outcome of the interplay of selected control mechanisms in a given organizational context. Control mechanisms in project based organizations, in our view, encompasses all devices and tools that management deploys to ensure that acts, behaviours, outcomes and decisions of individuals and the project team as a whole are consistent with organizational goals and strategy (Tuuli, Rowlinson and Koh, 2010). We believe that the relationship between organizational design choices in terms of control mechanisms and the projects ability to deliver effective knowledge creation can be fruitfully investigated.