Opportunistic Innovation and Predictable Goal Achievements - Essay Example

 As knowledge integration mechanisms, the management control systems can be utilized to ensure the control over the goals reaching and the provision of employees within the organization's ability to search for opportunities and find solutions to issues (Mundy, 2010). While the controlling role of management control systems is associated, according to Mundy (2010) with the efficiency, predictability, and importance to meet the short-term goals, it strives to diminish issues of information asymmetry and search for the ways that would decrease uncertainty and improve decision-making. There are numerous studies that highlight the use of management control systems by organizations in order to facilitate innovation and learning during the exertion of control over the achieved goals. The importance of management control systems is in the provision of the organization’s values and priorities in leveraging the belief system, which gives employees a stable environment and challenges organizational stability and political processes by means of communication of values and assumptions (Mundy, 2010). For modern business, it is essential that the levers of control supported the development of organizational abilities of innovation, learning, entrepreneurship, and market orientation. While the level of control promotes forming of dynamic tension between innovation and goals achievement, it is a positive growth for each organization; hence, it should be studied by the companies. Besides, they do so in order to handle inter-organizational conflicts. It proves that the formation of dynamic tensions influences the development of organizational capacity.

            Simons (1995), states that within the modern business environment, managers are facing different challenges in terms of seeking opportunities for meeting the customers’ needs. Thus, employees can break the control mechanisms within a business and ruin the company’s reputation and cause fines and business losses. One solution in managing control issues can be monitoring of employees and counseling about how to make a certain job. Simons (1995) considers that in the intense business environment managers, however, have no time for each team member to be provided with the necessary advice. For that purpose, numerous tools to reconcile and tension between innovation and control are used and managers can measure the progress against the plans in order to ensure the achievement of goals. Simons (1995) recommends renewing the business strategy with four levers of control, which will enable managers to handle the creativity of employees and ensure the important goals to be achieved effectively. Another approach to managing the tension between innovation and goal achievement can be exercised through diagnostic control systems that enable managers to monitor the signs of “abnormal functioning” (Simons, 1995). Additionally, managers can use belief systems to articulate the values and directions of employees. The vivid examples of such beliefs are the current values of the companies, the level of their performance, and the expectations of how individuals will manage relationships. Moreover, managers can utilize boundary systems, where employees would be told what not to do and thus innovation will be fostered. In another case, when managers are telling employees what to do, that discourages initiative and creativity among employees. Finally, there is a possibility of an organization empowering employees to the innate potential of people to innovate. Such an approach helps to reduce tension between innovation and goal achievement through rising employees’ potential.