The illusion of no control: management control systems facilitating autonomous motivation in university research

Abstract

Autonomous motivation, a fundamental factor influencing research success, can be undermined when people feel pressured, managed or controlled. So how do universities – which are under increasing external pressure to manage research activities to produce outcomes – exert management control without threatening the autonomous motivation of their researchers? We address this question through an exploratory case study of the management control systems used in two university faculties. Our results confirm the importance of autonomous motivation in driving researchers’ activity and show how incentives, performance evaluation and cultural–administrative structures can be designed to not only preserve, but also enhance and leverage this motivation.

Interrelation of Controls for Autonomous Motivation: A Field Study of Productivity Gains Through Pressure-Induced Process Innovation

“…More recently, this literature has been focusing on distinguishing different types of creativity and innovation (e.g., Pfister 2014; Cools, Stouthuysen, and Van den Abbeele 2017; Davila and Ditillo 2017). 6 Several management accounting studies consider SDT more generally, thereby examining, for example, its role in budget participation (Wong-On-Wing, Guo, and Lui 2010), strategic planning meetings (De Baerdemaeker and Bruggeman 2015), performance metric design (Groen, Wouters, and Wilderom 2017), subjective performance evaluation (Kunz 2015), and control systems for scholarly work (Sutton and Brown 2016). 7 The literature on target setting suggests, as might be expected, that challenging, but likely achievable, targets are often optimal for motivational purposes (Stedry 1960;Merchant and Manzoni 1989).…”

Counting what counts: A researcher productivity scoring framework for South African's universities of technology

“…When it comes to research, it has been argued that autonomous motivation is the "sacred spark" that keeps researchers focused on carrying out the research, despite whatever challenges/obstacles they may face. To this end, the findings by Sutton and Brown (2016) revealed three autonomous motivational factors: (i) passion for doing research which constitutes outcomes and contribution of their research, involvement in the research process itself and their inherent interest in the content of the research; (ii) research incentives and performance evaluation criteria that rewarded them with more opportunities/resources to do more research; and (iii) cultural-administrative structures that enhances and reinforces autonomous motivation to do research -this is by way internalisation of these structures by the researchers. This is in contrast with researchers that look up for external stimulation such the one from their supervisors (Reeve 2012).…”

“…The global changes sweeping across the higher education sector have resulted in pressure on universities to produce more research outcomes and hence resulting in more competitive funding and research performance evaluation systems (Sutton and Brown 2016). This has led to increased external administrative control over researchers and their work (Humphrey and Gendron 2015) as well as cascading effects of increased competition among individual researchers, universities/research institutes, countries and even among different journals (Adler and Harzing 2009).…”

“…However, evidence indicates that most of these incentives are ineffective and have in most cases been viewed as "rewards" for when these activities did occur (Andersen and Pallesen 2008;Derrick and Bryant 2013). Empirical studies further reveal that some of these incentive systems have led to negative or malfunctioning research performance enhancement (Sutton and Brown 2016). One of the reasons for the negative results is the perceived element of "control" that diminishes the power of autonomous motivation -which refers to "when people act out of their own volition and self-endorsement" (Ryan andDeci 2000, cited in Sutton andBrown 2016).…”

“…Empirical studies further reveal that some of these incentive systems have led to negative or malfunctioning research performance enhancement (Sutton and Brown 2016). One of the reasons for the negative results is the perceived element of "control" that diminishes the power of autonomous motivation -which refers to "when people act out of their own volition and self-endorsement" (Ryan andDeci 2000, cited in Sutton andBrown 2016).…”