Balance Within the Control Levers

Sammanfattning: This paper conducts a case study to examine the relationship between balance and management control systems (MCS) in organizations that are confronted with paradoxes. Through the integrated application of Simons' (1995) levers of control framework and paradox literature (Smith and Lewis, 2011), we identify a new way of understanding the notion of balance: balance within the control levers. We find that (i) balance within the control levers is created when each control lever addresses all paradoxical elements of the corporate strategy, (ii) in the presence of organizational paradoxes, balance within the control levers can be a prerequisite for balance between control levers, and (iii) in the absence of balance within the control levers, the reinforcement of opposing forces to restore or strengthen the balance between the control levers can lead to unintended and counterproductive outcomes. The findings of this paper contribute by further advancing how the notion of balance in MCS can be understood.