Strategies of Administrative Control and Organizational Effectiveness

Abstract

The results of a comparative study of thirty manufacturing firms in India indicated that the most effective organizations tended to choose a unidimensional strategy of administrative control. This strategy consisted of the use of formalized procedures to control decentralized decision-making with respect to both human and material resources. The least effective firms chose a similar strategy of control, however they emphasized mainly those procedures involving the control of material resources and tended to neglect their human resources in this respect. These results are interpreted as evidence in favor of normative theory of administrative control in organizations. The most effective strategy for maintaining indirect control over a decentralized decision-making process appears to be one which effectively integrates the rational material resource controls with the more intangible human resource control mechanisms.