Reconceptualizing Organizational Control : Managing in the Age of Hybrid Workplaces, Artificial Intelligence, and the Gig Economy

The COVID-19 pandemic, together with new developments in information and communication technologies, has brought about profound changes in organizations, with a surge in virtual, remote, and alternative working arrangements. This book presents a reconceptualization of organizational control theory for the 21st century.

Organizational control addresses the fundamental yet vexing managerial problem of aligning workers'' capabilities, activities, and performance with organizational goals and aspirations. In recent years, the onset of COVID-19, combined with new developments in information and communication technologies, has brought about profound changes in organizations, and even in the nature of work itself. We have seen surges in virtual and remote work; progression of alternative work arrangements (especially in the gig economy); and an increasingly wide-spread reliance on algorithmic monitoring and control. These changes have exacerbated the tension between the pursuit of individual and organizational interests, exposing the limits of traditional approaches to organizational control, and questioning whether they still reflect contemporary organizational realities. Providing a comprehensive discussion of the multi-disciplinary approaches to organizational control, this book integrates the new and evolving trends in technology, organizations, and society into a reconceptualization of organizational control for twenty-first-century organizations.