PhD Project opportunity at Cranfield School of Management within the area of Business Performance Management and Strategy. http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/som/phd

1. Management Control Practices
in Organizations [PhD Project]
Research in this area would focus on understanding
how management control emerges and functions, aiming to extend the current knowledge
of the antecedents, nature, and consequences of control in organizations.
Admission requirements:
• a strong first degree (UK level 2.1 minimum)
• please see website for English language requirements.
Deadlines:
• applications for scholarships – mid-April.
Expressions of interest, alongside a CV, are invited via email to
andrey.pavlov@cranfield.ac.uk in the first instance.
See full details on our website.
The era of top-down hierarchical performance management and management control
frameworks is over, and the research evaluating their impact does not provide any conclusive
evidence of such. There are just as many studies documenting the positive effect of
performance management systems on performance as there are those that show that such
an effect is absent or even negative. It is clear that we need new approaches both to
designing performance management and management control systems and to evaluating
their effectiveness.
The practice perspective with its focus on the actual practices in which people engage provides
an alternative – and perhaps a more fruitful – way of examining the functions and mechanisms
of management control in organizations. Control then becomes something that people in
organizations do rather than something that organizations have or implement (cf. Jarzabkowski
et al., 2007). This perspective allows us to ask such questions as: What is the real source of
control in organizations? How does performance management and management control get
interpreted and enacted by people in organizations? What underpins success and failure of
performance management initiatives? What are the limits of management control?
Strong candidate
sought to study
antecedents, nature and
consequences of control
in organizations.
Supervisors: Dr Andrey Pavlov & Professor Cliff Bowman
“Pupeteer”byMoggsOceanlaneislicensedunderCCBY2.0
www.cranfield.ac.uk/som/phd