A MULTIPLE PARADIGM APPROACH TO ORGANIZATIONAL CONTROL

Abstract

The literature on the nature of organizational control processes is dominated by the four broad perspectives of cybernetics/goal, power/authority, culture, and evolution. Arguing against subscribing to any individual perspective, this paper proposes a multiple paradigm perspective, employing the three sociological paradigms of social factism, social behaviorism, and social definitionism. This multi‐perspective approach is then applied to an evolutionary conception of organizational control.