RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT CONTROL 279
from a societal perspective. This is also a major theme of Stafford Beer, most
comprehensively in his 1972 bookBrain of the Firm.Hereheusesthehumannervous
system as an analogy for the control mechanisms that need to be adopted at various
levels in the control of an organization. However, Beer’s major contribution lies
in his attempt to tackle issues of the overall societal and political context within
which more detailed organizational forms and controls emerge. This is a theme
which is picked up, albeit in a very different form, by the radical theorists of the
1980s and 1990s. The standard concepts of the cybernetic literature do not have
such a straightforward application to the issue of organizational control as some
presentations of them tend to imply. However, they do provide a language in
which any of the central issues of management control may be expressed.
Further progress comes from the use of general systems theory which stresses
the importance ofemergentproperties of systems, that is, properties which are
characteristic of the level of complexity being studied and which do not have
meaning at lower levels; such properties are possessed by the system but not by
its parts. Systems thinking is thus primarily a tool for dealing with high levels
of complexity, particularly with reference to systems which display adaptive
and apparently goal-seeking behaviour (Lilienfeld, 1978). Some useful conceptual
distinctions are drawn by Lowe and McInnes (1971) who attempt to apply a
systems approach to the design of MCSs. An important extension to the realm of
so-called ‘soft’ systems (i.e. systems which include human beings, where objectives
are vague and ambiguous, decision-making processes ill-defined, and where, at
best, only qualitative measures of performance exist) has been made by the
Checkland school at Lancaster (Checkland, 1981; Wilson, 1984).
One of the central issues with which the ‘soft’ systems methodology has to
cope is the imputation of objectives to the system. In many ways this methodology
reflects theverstehen(or insight) tradition of thought in sociology, where great stress
is laid upon the accuracy and honesty of observation, the sensitivity and perception
of the observer, and on the imaginative interpretations of observations. Although
the soft systems approach has had considerable success in producing solutions
to real problems, it does not appear to have contributed to the development of
the theory of control in the normal academic sense. It is very much an applied
problem-solving methodology in its present form rather than a research method
designed to yield generalizable explanations, although it undoubtedly has further
potential in this area. This raises the issue of the nature and type of theories that
can be expected in such a complex area of human and social behaviour.
A framework to map developments in management
control research
Scott (1981) analysed the development of organization theory using two dimen-
sions. First, he saw a transition from closed to open systems models of organization,
reflecting the influence of systems ideas. Prior to 1960 most theorists tended to
assume that organizations could be understood apart from their environments,
and that most important processes and events were internal to the organization.