Distributed Control in Social Systems

The performance of social systems is an object of continuous theoretical debate and of manifold practical conflicts. Many approaches to defining criteria of performance and techniques of measurement have been developed and applied. The fact that the attempts are multifarious indicates that the domain of inquiry at hand is still at an immature stage, with pragmatism and eclecticism dominating the mainstream. Experts have called the subject area an "enigma" (Cameron 1984) and ascertained "a paradox of performance: organizational control is maintained by not knowing exactly what performance is" (Meyer & Gupta 1994: 309). Anyway, also some promising approaches to the conceptualization of organizational performance have emerged (Venkatraman & Ramanujam 1986 Bamberger & Fiegenbaum 1996). For an overview on the discussion, see Meyer & Gupta 1994 and Lumpkin & Dess 1996.