In an environment where employees have the freedom to direct some time away from their day-to-day routine tasks to work on creative endeavors, we examine whether nonbinding targets for the amount of time to spend (input target) and/or the amount of output to produce (output target) on the routine task affects creative task performance. Results of a laboratory experiment demonstrate that providing both an input and an output target on the routine task leads to greater creative task performance relative to providing one or none of these targets. This result is consistent with theory suggesting that individuals need guidance as to how much routine work to complete in order to achieve the cognitive closure necessary for them to think creatively. However, individuals also need guidance that encourages them to limit time on their relatively comfortable routine work and spend time on more open-ended creative endeavors. By setting expectations as to what employees need to achieve on their more routine day-to-day responsibilities, organizations can increase the efficacy of the growing practice of allowing employees to spend a portion of their work week on creative endeavors.
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Zusammenfassung Unternehmen verwenden Management Control Systeme, um die Strategie zu implementieren und sicherzustellen, dass MitarbeiterInnen im Sinne des Unternehmens handeln. Diese umfassen sowohl formale Steuerungsmechanismen (z. B. Anreiz-und Monitoring-Systeme), als auch informelle Steuerungsmechanismen (z. B. MitarbeiterInnenselektion und Unternehmenskultur). In diesem Beitrag geben wir einen Überblick zum aktuellen Stand der empirischen Management Control Forschung und besprechen diese anhand dreier Literaturströmungen. Im ersten Teil beschreiben wir welche Steuerungsmechanismen zur Verfügung stehen und was die Management Control Forschung bisher dazu erarbeitet hat. Darauf aufbauend beschreiben wir im zweiten Teil den sogenannten Kontingenzansatz, in dem untersucht wird, wie der Unternehmenskontext die Anwendung und Wirkung der Steuerungsmechanismen beeinflusst. Im dritten Teil gehen wir schließlich auf Interdependenzen zwischen den Steuerungsmechanismen ein. In jedem dieser Teile wird auf bestehende Forschungslücken hingewiesen. Im letzten Teil des Beitrags wird schließlich ein Ausblick darüber gegeben, wie der Trend hin zur Wissensgesellschaft sowie zur künstlichen Intelligenz und Big Data die Management Control Forschung zukünftig prägen wird.
This study provides descriptive evidence on target-setting policies in multi-divisional firms. Despite the importance of performance targets in practice, research mainly focuses on a few key areas in target setting, neglecting many other important aspects of target setting in organizations. Hence, relatively little is known about how performance targets are actually set, especially within multi-divisional firms. We perform in-depth interviews with managers responsible for target setting in multi-divisional firms. Using this interview information, we develop specific research questions that we examine in a survey among large U.S. and European multi-divisional firms. Broadly speaking, the survey results provide evidence that firms commit substantial time and resources to the target-setting process, indicating that they place a high strategic importance on this process. However, we also find that they are not very effective in reaching the goals of the target-setting process. Most importantly, we find a large variation in target-setting policies across firms. We exploit this variation to identify future research directions to guide examination of the diverse decisions managers encounter in the field of target setting.
We examine the relation between incentive plans based on relative performance and competitive aggressiveness. Using data on executive incentivecompensation contracts in large U.S. firms, we find a positive association between competitive aggressiveness and peer group overlap-that is, the extent to which two firms select each other as peers in these incentive plans. Our findings indicate that managers of such firms take more frequent as well as more complex competitive actions, relative to managers evaluated on relative performance without peer group overlap. Moreover, we show that these competitive tactics are more pronounced when managers compete against: (1) peers with similar grant sizes, (2) peers on similar performance metrics, and (3) peers in the same industry. Collectively, our findings provide evidence
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