Sutton 2014

Accounting and Finance
The illusion of no control: management control systems

facilitating autonomous motivation in university research
Nicole C. Sutton, David A. Brown

School of Accounting, University of Technology, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Abstract
Autonomous motivation, a fundamental factor influencing research success,

can be undermined when people feel pressured, managed or controlled. So how
do universities – which are under increasing external pressure to manage
research activities to produce outcomes – exert management control without
threatening the autonomous motivation of their researchers? We address this
question through an exploratory case study of the management control systems
used in two university faculties. Our results confirm the importance of
autonomous motivation in driving researchers’ activity and show how
incentives, performance evaluation and cultural–administrative structures can
be designed to not only preserve, but also enhance and leverage this motivation.
Key words: Autonomous motivation; Management control systems; Research

management; Self-determination theory; Universities
JEL classification: I23, M40
doi: 10.1111/acfi.12099
We gratefully acknowledge the guidance provided by Sven Modell and Donald Stokes
on the early stages of this research and comments provided by participants at research
seminars at the University of Technology, Sydney, 2007 and 2011; Macquarie
University, 2008; Melbourne University, 2008; the EAA Annual Conference, Rotter-
dam, The Netherlands, April 2008; the AFAANZ Annual Conference, Sydney,
Australia, July 2008; AAA Annual Conference, Anaheim, USA, August 2008; and
members of the Management Accounting Research Collaborative (MARC) and the
Centre for Management and Organizational Studies (CMOS) at UTS, the editors Steven
Cahan and Mandy Cheng of Accounting and Finance, and the anonymous reviewer.
Received 8 August 2013; accepted 28 August 2014 by Mandy Cheng(Editor).
© 2014 AFAANZ
2 N. C. Sutton, D. A. Brown/Accounting and Finance
1. Introduction
Autonomous motivation, which refers to when people act out of their own
volition and self-endorsement (Ryan and Deci, 2000a,b), has long been
recognised as the ‘sacred spark’ behind academics’ research success (Cole and
Cole, 1973), with numerous empirical studies demonstrating links between
researchers’ productivity and motivation (Pelz and Andrews, 1976; Fox, 1983;
Wood, 1990; Ramsden, 1994; Babu and Singh, 1998; Porter and Umbach,
2001; Bland et al., 2005). However, psychology theory suggests that autono-
mous motivation, in both its intrinsic and extrinsic forms,1 can be diminished
by the overt exercise of control (Deci, 1971; Deci and Ryan, 1985), such as the
forms of management control increasingly associated with university research
management.
In many countries, universities have come under increasing pressure to
produce research outcomes and have been subject to higher education reforms
that involve the introduction of competitive funding and performance
evaluation systems (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Develop-
ment, 1999, 2005). Researchers in management and accounting have been
highly critical of the effects such systems have on academics within universities
(e.g. Willmott, 1995; Parker et al., 1998; Neumann and Guthrie, 2002; Modell,
2003), substantiated in part by empirical studies that report negative or
dysfunctional incidences of quantitative performance evaluation systems,
competitive reward structures and more direct administrator surveillance by
university administrators (e.g. Parker and Jary, 1995; Prichard and Willmott,
1997; Anderson, 2006; Macdonald and Kam, 2007; Pop-Vasileva et al., 2011;
Ter Bogt and Scapens, 2012). Consequently, this current institutional context
appears to pose a managerial puzzle: how can universities exert management
control over research whilst still preserving and even facilitating the autono-
mous motivation of their researchers?
To address this question, we present the findings from an exploratory study
we conducted of two university faculties. To contrast several recent
university-based studies which report negative or dysfunctional management
accounts, we intentionally sought to adopt a more appreciative lens, by
studying management control systems (MCS) in the context of research
productivity to try and understand ‘what works’ (Malmi and Granlund,
2009). In management accounting research, there is a significant range of
existing work that considers the potential of MCS to enable autonomy,
creativity, flexibility and innovation (e.g. Abernethy and Stoelwinder, 1995;
1
Autonomous motivation is a broad category that encompasses several types of
motivation that drive self-regulated behaviour. The best-known ‘prototypical’ form of
autonomous motivation is intrinsic motivation, but the category also includes types of
extrinsic motivation in which people have identified with an activity’s value and
integrated it into their sense of self (Ryan, 2000; Ryan and Deci, 2000).
© 2014 AFAANZ
N. C. Sutton, D. A. Brown/Accounting and Finance 13
4.2. Management control systems
4.2.1. Management control in the Faculty of Social Sciences
In FSS, the focus of management effort appears directed towards bringing

the diverse range of individuals to work together. Within the organisational
structure, each of the FSS’s researchers and students were designated into
several thematically based areas of ‘research strength’, with each governed by a
senior professor and meeting regularly at thematically based research seminars
and workshops. Participation in the strength structures was also encouraged by
preferential funding arrangements, including prioritised access to project grants
and PhD scholarships.
There were also several facultywide policies encouraging greater contact
between different FSS members. The conditions attached to the faculty grant
scheme gave priority to early-career researchers, which promoted joint
submissions from collaborating senior and junior staff. The faculty sponsored
a series of ‘how to’ workshops for senior researchers to relate their practical
research experiences to other staff – such as how to write successful grant
applications or how to improve chances of publication. New recruitment
policies encouraged academics to employ more PhD candidates as research
assistants, with the aim of exposing students to more research opportunities
and providing additional channels of communication between PhD candidates
and their supervisors.
Many attributed the emergence of collaboration-enabling administrative
mechanisms to the need to adapt to university, and government, policies that
emphasised ‘research concentrations’ (Faculty Administrator, FSS). However,
many academics and administrators also saw the benefit of encouraging a shift
away from the individualistic, sole-researcher traditions associated with
humanities and social sciences:
It’s the big irony, in social science people are not social, right, this is antisocial
science. People all work on their own, they publish on their own, they abandon
their students, and they assume that people are clever or they’re not, and they can
sink or swim. (Professor, FSS)
Several interviewees described ways in which the FSS administrative
structure appeared to be altering the traditional social dynamics. For example,
one professor thought the closer physical colocation of faculty members
created the necessary proximity and frequency of contact for people to engage
confidently in authentic, meaningful, critical communication about research.
The seminar and workshops series were highly valued for ‘creating an
atmosphere where people share ideas’, providing a ‘really stimulating program’,
‘fostering real intellectual exchange’, ‘building networks’ and providing
opportunities for postgraduate students to meet and talk with visiting scholars.
Faculty members also believed administrative structures enabled stronger
© 2014 AFAANZ
The paper’s structure is as follows. Section 2 contains the literature review,

Section 3 explains the research method, and Section 4 provides two case
studies. In Section 5, we present the cross-case study analysis that results in a
more general empirically and theoretically derived approach to how MCS
relates to autonomous motivation within academic settings. The discussion and
conclusion (Section 6) outlines the study’s limitations and implications for
future research.
2. Literature review
2.1. Motivation and research productivity
An academic’s own personal motivation for doing research has long been
recognised as one of the fundamental factors influencing the performance of
academic researchers (Fox, 1983). Early sociological studies of highly produc-
tive academics found them to be distinguished by a ‘sacred spark’, ‘motivated
by an inner drive to do science and by a sheer love of the work’, irrespective of
any recognition or reward (Cole and Cole, 1973, p. 62). This was supported by
a landmark study of more than 1300 researchers by Pelz and Andrews (1976)
who found productive researchers’ motivation to be characterised by high
intensity, oriented towards advancing science and driven from internal sources
such as their own ideas and curiosity.3 Others have since found strong links
between productivity and researchers’ internal source of motivation (Babu and
Singh, 1998; Bland et al., 2005), intrinsic interest in science (Wood, 1990;
Porter and Umbach, 2001), and intensity and persistence (Ramsden, 1994).
This link may be further understood in the context other research which shows
that when people engage in intrinsically motivated tasks, they display more
persistence, creativity and cognitive flexibility (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Amabile,
1997; Ryan, 2000), all of which appear integral to knowledge-intensive,
complex, cognitive tasks, like university research.
2.2. Self-determination theory
Understanding how different types of motivation are influenced by intra-

personal events and structures has been one of the formative and fundamental
lines of inquiry in SDT (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Ryan, 2000, 2002; Ryan and
Deci, 2000).4 Specifically, SDT posits that autonomous motivation – the
behavioural force driving self-regulated behaviour, which includes both
3
In comparison, scientists who depended on stimulation from supervisors (‘external
motivation’) were consistently less productive (Pelz and Andrews, 1976).
4
SDT has been widely used in psychology, education, sport and more recently
organisational research. Reviews of this work include Ryan (2000), Ryan and Deci
(2000), Deci and Ryan (2002), Sheldon et al. (2003) and Gagne and Deci (2005).
© 2014 AFAANZ
rewards, group level performance evaluation, administrative systems and

cultural structures, which satisfy researchers’ needs for autonomy, competence
and relatedness. Thus, SDT provides a rationale for why some of the
distinguishing features of the MCS observed in this study did not lead to
dysfunctional effects reported in other university settings.
Many in management accounting have been critical of how university
research has been measured, managed and governed, especially in terms of
more quantified performance evaluation systems (Willmott, 1995; Parker et al.,
1998; Neumann and Guthrie, 2002; Modell, 2003). However, often previous
literature has viewed research management in aggregate, and either focuses on
institutional or sector-level mechanisms, such as journal rankings, funding
policies, sector performance evaluation schemes (e.g. Parker et al., 1998;
Neumann and Guthrie, 2002; Modell, 2003; Macdonald and Kam, 2007) or on
surveys of individual’s opinion on general issues relating to academic life not
specific to research management, such as academic freedom, research quality
and stress (e.g. Prichard and Willmott, 1997; Pop-Vasileva et al., 2011). Our
study represents an attempt to understand the operational implications of these
macro-level concerns, by examining the nature and operational consequences
of MCS used within universities.
Specifically on the issue of performance evaluation, our study provides a
counter example to Ter Bogt and Scapens (2012) who reported that
performance measurement systems introduced in two different university
settings inhibited creativity and caused increases in stress, anxiety and pressure.
However, in contrast to the autonomy-supportive features observed in our
study, these systems periodically subjected researchers to quantified, ‘judge-
mental’ performance evaluations that compared individuals’ performance,
using quantitative, standardised measures, which then had individual-level
consequences (e.g. pressure to meet expectations to perform and adjustments to
individuals’ formal workloads). In addition, while elsewhere academics
perceived efforts to monitor their performance as an imposition of bureaucratic
administrators (Parker and Jary, 1995; Anderson, 2006), such effects do not
seem to be as significant when surveillance is enacted through more lateral,
peer-based forms of governance and possibly enhances motivation by provid-
ing competence-enabling feedback.
Consequently, it seems that the success of MCS in enabling university
research hinges on the ability of the constituent mechanisms to operate with an
illusion of no control. This illusion is achieved largely through the construction
of perceived distance, that is, a lack of proximity and salience between
management control and researchers’ behaviour. In the case of incentives, this
distance manifests both in a temporal sense, between the daily operating cycles
of research tasks, and the several-year time spans relevant to incentives, as well
as in a process sense, between the final rewarded output and long and
convoluted series of tasks and decisions that lead to the output. Likewise,
cultural–administrative mechanisms facilitate an organisational distance, by
© 2014 AFAANZ
enabling a form of governance whereby there is very little management

performed by ‘managers’ or recognised administrators; often control is enacted
by fellow professionals (e.g. peers, senior academics) or, in the case of more
value-based control, by the individual themselves. It emerged through our
discussions with research managers that how the proximity is constructed, and
particularly maintaining a ‘distance’, seems to be an important and perhaps
even an intentional design feature of MCS in the knowledge work setting. As
one administrator put it:
I think that probably has to be a part of your research write up. . . the kind of
disguise, almost, the invisible knowledge that goes into supporting research
management. (Research administrator, FSS)
This research has a number of limitations, which provide potential
avenues for further research. The methodological limitations include the
difficulties in controlling for researcher and interviewee personal bias. In
addition, while we believe our results have analytical generalisability (Yin,
2003), the findings are derived only from two successful research units which
may not be representative or typical of experiences in other university
settings. Furthermore, we have not yet compared poor-performing research
units to establish the extent to which our results about the nature, use or
consequences of MCS hold. Also, while the study’s participants conducted
both teaching and research activities, the empirical scope of the study did
not encompass the MCS which was targeted towards their teaching. Given
the competing pressures individuals may perceive between these activities,
future research could also consider the motivational effects of a wider set of
MCS related to both research and teaching. Finally, further empirical work
could examine a range of other types of research settings to see how the
results translate across other forms of research activity, or other academic
disciplines.
References
Abernethy, M. A., and J. U. Stoelwinder, 1995, The role of professional control in the
management of complex organizations, Accounting, Organizations and Society 20, 1–
17.
Adler, P. S., and B. Borys, 1996, Two types of bureaucracy: enabling and coercive,
Administrative Science Quarterly 41, 61–89.
Adler, P. S., and C. X. Chen, 2011, Combining creativity and control: understanding
individual motivation in large-scale collaborative creativity, Accounting, Organiza-
tions and Society 36, 63–85.
Amabile, T. M., 1997, Motivating creativity in organizations: on doing what you love
and loving what you do, California Management Review 40, 39–58.
Anderson, G., 2006, Carving out time and space in the managerial university, Journal of
Organizational Change 19, 578–592.
Babu, A. R., and Y. P. Singh, 1998, Determinants of research productivity,
Scientometrics 43, 309–329.
© 2014 AFAANZ
2005, p. 335). Whilst still distinct from intrinsic motivation, these autonomous
forms of extrinsic motivation have been shown to provide many of the latter’s
associated benefits, including greater engagement, commitment, performance
and persistence (Sheldon et al., 2003; Gagne and Deci, 2005).
More recent SDT explanations attend to the processes by which the
regulation of behaviours can become internalised. Significantly, SDT argues
that internalisation processes rely on the satisfaction of the same basic needs of
competence and autonomy (e.g. by providing meaningful rationale for
uninteresting tasks, offering optimal challenges and ‘effectance-promoting
feedback’), with one important addition: people’s need for ‘relatedness’,10 that
is to feel they belong and are connected to others (Deci and Ryan, 1985, 2002;
Ryan and Connell, 1989; Gagne and Deci, 2005). The logic is that ‘because
extrinsically motivated behaviours are not inherently interesting and thus must
initially be externally prompted, the primary reason people are likely to be
willing to do the behaviours is that they are valued by significant others to
whom they feel (or would like to feel) connected’ (Ryan and Deci, 2000, p. 64).
In summary, SDT provides several insights relating to how the MCS applied
by universities may preserve and possibly enhance the autonomous motivation
of researchers. The degree to which MCS facilitate rather than undermine
autonomous motivation depends on whether they are perceived as controlling
or informational and autonomy-supportive. Researchers’ perceptions are likely
to be driven by the design characteristics of salient control systems, such as
performance evaluations and extrinsic rewards, as well as the administrative
and social structures through which control is enacted. In addition, self-
regulating behaviour may also reflect the adequacy of elements, such as cultural
control, to satisfy needs for relatedness and thus support the internalisation of
more extrinsic forms of autonomous motivation.
3. Research method
3.1. Exploratory case study method
Due to the lack of prior theory about the operation of MCS used within
universities, we undertook an exploratory case study method, described by
Keating (1995) as a ‘discovery case study’, to facilitate a deeper understanding
of the operational use of control systems (Otley and Berry, 1994; Sandelin,
2008). We studied two faculties within the same university,11 which were
10
Some SDT work indicates that the need for relatedness may also affect intrinsic
motivation; however, the vast majority of empirical research about intrinsic motivation
has focused only on the effects of autonomy and/or competence (Ryan, 2000).
11
Typical of most universities, this context is characterised by a metropolitan location in
Australia, a student population of over 30,000, a broad disciplinary spread, and a dual
focus on teaching and research activities.
© 2014 AFAANZ
specifically chosen using a theoretical sampling approach (Eisenhardt, 1989).

The key concern for selecting these two instrumental cases (Stake, 1995) was to
study the role of MCS in the context of research success to explore what
systems work and why.12 Thus, we aimed to select faculties that exhibited
strong indications of research performance by conducting a review of publicly
available information about candidate faculties’ successful competitive grant
applications, the publication records of academic staff, and the number and
progress of doctoral students,13 which we then compared to similar disciplinary
units in other institutions. An additional concern was to study two faculties
that had contrasting types of research activities to be able to better understand
the role of MCS across more than one setting.
The faculties identified through this sampling process were the Faculty of
Information Systems and Technology (FIST) and the Faculty of Social
Sciences (FSS).14 Both faculties exhibited comparatively strong indications of
research success: they had substantial track records spread across the faculties
members (i.e. performance was not concentrated in just a few individuals); they
were successful in winning nationally competitive grants and in attracting
industry sponsorship of research; they had high rate of quality academic
publications and had successful doctoral research candidates.
In terms of composition, both faculties were of a similar size, housing
between 60 and 80 academic staff who represented a diverse array of members,
in terms of experience (including associate lecturers, lecturers, senior lecturers,
associate professors and professors), as well as in their methodologies and
research traditions. For example, in FIST, a substantial proportion of research
activities were oriented around developing new technologies and technical
applications, but there were also qualitative-based projects focused on
understanding how different people interacted with various types of systems
and technologies. Likewise, although most FSS projects were open-ended in
nature and focused on understanding socially based issues, the heterogeneity of
staff backgrounds, which ranged from traditional academics, journalists,
librarians, social activists and creative artists, led to wide variety of project
outcomes, including academic, practitioner and creative outputs. The vast
majority of staff in both faculties engaged in both teaching and research
activities determined by standardised workloads determined by academic level
12
Whilst an alternative research design may have examined the operation of MCS
across variations in performance (i.e. ‘low’ vs. ‘high performance’), the difficulties in
conceptualising what ‘low performance’ constitutes (as distinct from academic settings
which are not as oriented towards research), as well as the political practicalities of
gaining access to study such areas prevented this approach.
13
These elements parallel the criteria used by government and funding bodies to assess
institutional research performance.
14
To maintain the anonymity of the interviewees, the names of the two faculties have
been changed.
© 2014 AFAANZ
and were paid according to a fixed salary scale. Neither faculty offered staff
salary supplementation nor monetary bonuses.
3.2. Data sources and collection
A key methodological feature of SDT is the primacy of the ‘self’ as a

‘phenomenal centre of personal experience and agency’ (Ryan and Connell,
1989, p. 749). While other psychology theories focus on ascribing ‘real’ motives
to individuals on the basis of ‘objective’ observations of associations between
environment and behaviour, SDT’s central theoretical concern is the perceived
impact of the environment, as experienced by the individual, and the primary
data source is the accounts individuals give to describe how they understand their
own purpose for acting (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Ryan and Connell, 1989). Thus, in
this study, the primary source of data was information gathered from open-
ended semi-structured interviews (Silverman, 2006).15 Interviewees were selected
using a stratified purposeful sampling approach (Patton, 2002), targeting
research administrators (at both faculty and university levels – most of whom
were professors), senior, middle and early-career researchers (see Table 1).
Interviews were conducted until theoretical saturation (Eisenhardt, 1989)
enabling a complete picture of the MCS and its use in both faculties (16
interviews averaging an hour each).16 Both authors attended many of the
interviews, one asking the questions and the other observing and taking notes.
Each interview was critically analysed in debriefing sessions where further
notes were made on impressions of the interviewees and developing themes.
The interview accounts were supplemented by other information acquired,
including observations of the work environment gathered through numerous
visits to the faculties, attendance at staff meetings and archival documents.
3.3. Data analysis
The analysis method was drawn from Glaser and Strauss (1967),
Eisenhardt (1989), Yin (2003), Miles and Hubermann (1994), and Patton
(2002). Each interview was recorded, transcribed and, with the archival data,
coded, based initially on the MCS package categories (Malmi and Brown,
2008). The coded data were then compiled into a checklist matrix (Miles and
Hubermann, 1994) which included interview quotes and other observations.
From the matrices, the researchers developed case descriptions of the two
15
A list of preliminary interview questions is provided in Table 2. These questions were
used particularly early in the data collection process; however, questions were adapted
to suit the expertise and insights of the specific interviewees.
16
A point to recognize is the high quality of respondents in the case study. In this
setting, each of the respondents was able to provide considerable information and
insight about the context in which they conducted their research. This led to theoretical
saturation earlier than we had anticipated when starting the field work.
© 2014 AFAANZ
Table 1
Interviewee listing
Number of interviewees
University research administrator 1
FSS FIST
Faculty administrators (administrator only) 1 1
Faculty administrators (research active professors) 1 2
Senior researchers 2 2
Middle career researchers 1 1
Early-career researchers 2 2
FSS, Faculty of Social Sciences; FIST, Faculty of Information Systems and Technology.
Table 2
Preliminary interview schedule
Questions
1. Could you tell me about your role within the faculty?

2. How do you see research being structured or grouped within this faculty?
3. Can you please describe the process of a typical research project that you are involved in?
4. To what extent is this similar to the type of research that is conducted within the department?
5. How would you explain the notion of ‘research performance’?
6. How are external parties involved with the research of the department?
7. Could you tell me about any systems, processes or approaches which are used to manage research
in this department?
8. What is the history behind these approaches?
9. How do these management systems influence the outcomes/aspects of research performance we
talked about earlier?
research units, including analyses of the MCS elements, as well as

participants’ observations of research activities, perceptions of research
performance and motivation. These case descriptions were compared to elicit
patterns (Eisenhardt, 1989) that prevailed across two different academic
settings. At this point in the analysis, the significance of individuals’ personal
motivation became apparent. We thus chose to use SDT as the theoretical
lens, as it gives priority to the phenomenon our participants wanted to talk
about and also simultaneously allowed us to explore the implications of MCS
in this setting. Using SDT, we developed a more detailed operational level
analysis of how and why MCS influence the motivation and behaviour of
researchers within successful university units.
4. Case study findings
In this section, we present the empirical material from our study. We first
present the firsthand accounts by interviewees, across both faculties, about
© 2014 AFAANZ
their motivation towards research, before then describing the MCS used in each
faculty.
4.1. Researcher motivation
In both faculties, interviewees highlighted the importance of their own

personal motivation in driving their research activity. The predominant
motivation they spoke about – the reason they attributed to working so hard
– concerned their own personal beliefs, values and attitudes they held about
their work, most commonly referred to as their ‘passion for research’:
. . . it’s part of how I see the role of my position and it’s a personal passion, so that’s
why we do it. (Researcher, FSS)
I enjoy doing research, so I suppose that you’ll probably find most of the big
researchers actually really, really like research. (Researcher, FIST)
To me, research is fun; it’s about learning and if it’s not fun, I mean, do something
else. . . You know, I have students come into the lab and they’re all very serious
about research, it doesn’t take them very long before they realise that, no, it’s about
passion and just having fun. And then they fold, I can never get rid of them. . . it’s
hard work. That’s where the passion comes in, you’ve got to really want to do this
stuff because they’re, like, my students spend a lot of hours in that lab. You know,
we’re all there ‘til midnight very often. But we love it. (Researcher FIST)
Our subsequent analysis revealed a degree of heterogeneity in the researchers’
comments about their motivation, in the way different individuals spoke about
what specifically they were passionate about. Three key patterns emerged from
this analysis.17
First, some researchers, who we have labelled the ‘interested’, described their
motivation in terms of their inherent interest in their discipline, and the actual
content and ideas of their research:
I mean, certainly I prefer to engage in curiosity driven research, I mean, that’s the
really fun stuff. (Researcher, FIST)
. . . you need something that interests you vitally and will get you through the tough
periods when you’ve got masses of stuff, and what do I do with it, and I’m stressed
out, and how am I going to get through. (Researcher, FIST)
I try not to get sucked into thinking what is going to be good for my career. . .. So I
think churning out papers, because I think that I need to write 64 papers because
17
We also analysed the interview data to ascertain if there were differences between the
comments made by researchers from different faculties and could find no consistent
patterns. As the balance of interview comments from both faculties demonstrates, there
is substantial similarity in the types of motivation expressed by researchers across both
settings.
© 2014 AFAANZ
I’m going to get promoted to senior lecturer, or something like that, well, it’s just a
ticket to a sad life. . . . I try and do interesting things and maintain high standards.
(Researcher, FIST)
Second, many researchers, who spoke of their own love for the technical
process of doing research tasks, whether it is thinking through a conceptual or
theoretical problem or the practical process of conducting an experiment, and
of doing research for its own sake. As these researchers are motivated by the
value they place on the research process itself, we categorised them as the
‘technicians’:
You know, you can sit there thinking about what you’re going to do and how
you’re going to create, and this sort of thing, but when you actually do it, this other
process happens and one thing leads to another, and ideas come and it gets formed
and it’s exciting. That’s what you like, you like creating work and being engaged
with ideas and challenged by ideas. (Researcher, FSS)
So what is interesting for me is deciding what is essential in the theory, what you can
compromise, and how much you need to compromise. And it’s in this process of, sort
of, massaging the theory, and compromising as you go, that you learn so much
because you’re really trying to map this ideal solution to a complex real world and
that’s interesting, not everybody does find that interesting. (Researcher, FIST)
Third, we also found researchers who had strong expectations for the
outcomes of their research and spoke of a need to make use of their position as
university academics, as ‘public intellectuals’, to make relevant and useful
contributions to society (e.g. new technology, community-empowering infor-
mation, policy advice, or critical perspectives of societal issues). We have
labelled researchers with this outlook as the ‘idealists’:
I also come in each day because I really do think it’s important and it’s going to
make a difference. (Researcher, FIST)
Certainly, a number one priority is to deliver to homeless people and to ensure that
the research is respectful to any homeless people who are taking part; that it was
relevant, if that’s what the project’s about; that it was performed in such a way that
it was framed to have some impact on homeless people. Otherwise, to me, there’s
no point doing it. (Researcher, FSS)
Taken together, these statements not only confirm the significance of
researchers’ work motivation to their daily activity, but also reveal different
meanings ascribed to individuals’ ‘passion for research’, which align to the
different categories of autonomous motivation in SDT. Researchers driven by
their own inherent interest in either the content (i.e. ‘the interested’), or the
process (i.e. the ‘technicians’) of research appear to be driven by intrinsic
motivation, whereas the more instrumental ‘idealists’, who are more driven by
the value the outcomes of their work have, are more representative of
autonomous forms of integrated and identified extrinsic motivation.
© 2014 AFAANZ
4.2. Management control systems
4.2.1. Management control in the Faculty of Social Sciences
In FSS, the focus of management effort appears directed towards bringing

the diverse range of individuals to work together. Within the organisational
structure, each of the FSS’s researchers and students were designated into
several thematically based areas of ‘research strength’, with each governed by a
senior professor and meeting regularly at thematically based research seminars
and workshops. Participation in the strength structures was also encouraged by
preferential funding arrangements, including prioritised access to project grants
and PhD scholarships.
There were also several facultywide policies encouraging greater contact
between different FSS members. The conditions attached to the faculty grant
scheme gave priority to early-career researchers, which promoted joint
submissions from collaborating senior and junior staff. The faculty sponsored
a series of ‘how to’ workshops for senior researchers to relate their practical
research experiences to other staff – such as how to write successful grant
applications or how to improve chances of publication. New recruitment
policies encouraged academics to employ more PhD candidates as research
assistants, with the aim of exposing students to more research opportunities
and providing additional channels of communication between PhD candidates
and their supervisors.
Many attributed the emergence of collaboration-enabling administrative
mechanisms to the need to adapt to university, and government, policies that
emphasised ‘research concentrations’ (Faculty Administrator, FSS). However,
many academics and administrators also saw the benefit of encouraging a shift
away from the individualistic, sole-researcher traditions associated with
humanities and social sciences:
It’s the big irony, in social science people are not social, right, this is antisocial
science. People all work on their own, they publish on their own, they abandon
their students, and they assume that people are clever or they’re not, and they can
sink or swim. (Professor, FSS)
Several interviewees described ways in which the FSS administrative
structure appeared to be altering the traditional social dynamics. For example,
one professor thought the closer physical colocation of faculty members
created the necessary proximity and frequency of contact for people to engage
confidently in authentic, meaningful, critical communication about research.
The seminar and workshops series were highly valued for ‘creating an
atmosphere where people share ideas’, providing a ‘really stimulating program’,
‘fostering real intellectual exchange’, ‘building networks’ and providing
opportunities for postgraduate students to meet and talk with visiting scholars.
Faculty members also believed administrative structures enabled stronger
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vertical relationships between PhD candidates and their supervisors, which

were thought to be particularly important vehicles by which junior faculty
members were socialised to adopt a research culture around scholarship and
collaboration:
Ultimately I think the research performance will hinge on the style of supervision
that you have dealt from the relationship of relevant students and colleagues. If
you’re there and you’re going to share issues and talk about problems together, and
giving time to people, then that becomes the basis for a better research culture and
it becomes the basis for better research performance. (Faculty Administrator, FSS)
In terms of incentives to do research, all FSS staff had fixed salaries, meaning
that there were no explicit monetary rewards for research; however, many
discussed the role of the internal funding scheme as a rewards system.
Researchers seemed to disregard the intrinsic value of money as a reward,
instead focusing on its instrumental value as a resource that allowed them to
‘buy time’ to conduct research18 :
It’s not a lack of money that’s preventing you from doing research, it’s a lack of
time, so if the money was going to be able to be used for anything it would be to
perhaps help you to buy out of some of your teaching so that you had more time,
but money per se, I don’t think, is really much of an incentive. (Researcher, FSS)
Similar to external competitive grant arrangements and university-wide
funding, the faculty funding scheme had eligibility conditions based on prior
performance output, such as prior track record of doctoral students, grant
applications and publications, as well as affiliation with a research strength and
demonstrated relevance to certain topic areas. However, in recognising that
strict reliance on output criteria favoured more senior researchers and
potentially undermined collaboration, the faculty-based scheme gave priority
to awarding grants to early-career researchers; this often resulted in joint
submissions from collaborating senior and junior staff.
The other incentive system that motivated FSS researchers were promotion
rewards. These were awarded periodically by committees made up of senior
academics and administrators, on the basis of holistic assessments of their
contributions in teaching, research and service activities.
4.2.2. Management control in the Faculty of Information Systems and

Technology
The management of research in FIST revolved around the strategic

appointment of several ‘star professors’. These academics, who were each
highly productive individuals, were brought into the institution several years
18
Researchers could use these funds to hire more research assistants to do time-
consuming but less central aspects of a project, or to pay the university the equivalent of
their teaching load responsibilities.
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previously, each charged with the responsibility of developing the research

capabilities of a small cluster or ‘laboratory’ of academics and research
students, organised around a particular theme. The laboratory structures were
evident in the physical organisation of the faculty’s research, as most
laboratory members, including the senior professor, were located within the
same self-contained workspaces (i.e. with desk spaces, meeting rooms, toilets
and kitchens) with open-plan layouts:
Well, that’s why I’d like to have a good relationship with my students. I work up in
the lab with them and I’m there every day. I have an office but I feel I’m never
there. I’m only there if I have to do something confidential and that doesn’t happen
very often. And I like it. I like the buzz in the lab. (Professor, FIST)
These spaces were separated by security doors, allowing the laboratory
researchers to make the spaces ‘their own’, by putting posters, timetables,
research ideas, brainstorming maps on the walls and leaving equipment and
experiments in the open area.
Physical proximity was also enacted at least once a week at meetings,
either in one-on-one supervisory meetings with the professor, or larger
collective forums. For example, in one laboratory, all 15 members attended
a weekly meeting where individuals presented their research and group
members raised any issues of concern. While observing one of these forum-
like meetings, we noticed how the professor would occasionally interject. In
a later private discussion, this professor revealed that he used the meetings
as ‘a vehicle’ through which he sought to influence the development of
certain shared values of the laboratory, seeking to cultivate a sort of ‘group
thought’.
Laboratory members also used ‘research visions’ – long-term conceptual
maps that outlined the key challenges within their field of research, and the key
goals and projects that the researchers planned to conduct to address those
challenges. New laboratory members, especially research students, were
encouraged to develop their own ‘research visions’ to quickly establish a
working knowledge of the location of their topic area within their discipline,
and in relation to other laboratory research projects.
The grouping of ‘like-minded’ people within formal laboratory structures
also appeared to allow the emergence of strong research-oriented cultures. This
social environment was perceived as:
Diverse. . . Supportive. . . I don’t think there’s much competition but it’s not, it’s
certainly constructive competition. People aren’t nasty about each other, at least
not to me. And people would generally try to help each other, so that’s that culture.
People are willing to appear vulnerable which means there’s not a lot of defence in
there, there’s not, like, people maintaining their barriers and trying to appear in
control when they’re not. People are saying, I’m struggling with this or I’m
struggling with that, not kind of, try and bluff their way through, which is nice.
(Researcher, FIST)
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The laboratory members described the development of these cultures as a

combination of an organic process of simply having spent significant amounts
of time together over the course of several years, as well as a strategic, almost
covert, cultivation of the culture by the senior academic. For example, in one
laboratory, the professor described how often in information technology
settings there are concerns regarding intellectual property, particularly in the
presence of highly intelligent yet potentially egotistical personalities, and a
tendency to resort to a ‘blame game culture’ when joint projects broke down.
This led to the professor’s observation that ‘computer scientists were not well
known for working in teams’. To counter this, the professor intentionally
sought to facilitate a spirit of ‘competitive collaboration’ by prompting explicit
discussions about the need for joint responsibility within the group, partnering
different people together and, if necessary, dividing groups to solve problems
separately in a quasi-competition. The result was the dissipation of antisocial
feelings amongst group members, an effective management of egos, and better
research solutions.
Researchers’ belief in their research projects led some to advocate a very
simple and cost-effective management model: ‘Get good people and leave them
alone’ (Researcher, FIST). However, when probed on this point, the intervie-
wee qualified this statement by explaining, the ideal research management
model should be; ‘give us money and leave us alone’. This also reveals that, as
motivated as good researchers are to do research, they require resources to do
so. The faculty administrators used project funding, which provided additional
resources, as a reward for past research output and as a way of engendering
accountability over the long term:
I mean, what did you do with the last lot of money we gave you, what have you got
to show for it and based on that we can fund you for this next project that you’ve
come up with. (Faculty Administrator, FIST)
FIST researchers also viewed promotion as a means to access further
resources, as more senior researchers were granted more time to do research,
and the perception was that this enabled researchers to amass greater track
records which opened up access to other funding schemes.
The other significant incentive system in FIST was the conference-funding
scheme, which provided funding to academics to travel and present their
research at conferences. From the researchers’ perspective, this scheme
provided paid travel and allowed them to participate at conferences which,
in the fast changing field of information technology, were vital. Historically, the
scheme had been perceived as very generous in that ‘you would get paid to go
to any conference you wanted, if you could produce ten conference papers, the
faculty would fund you to go there’ (Researcher, FIST). From the perspective
of FIST administrators, this model had been successful in generating measured
publication output (proceedings). However, due to recent resource constraints,
it had recently been altered, through a cap on the number of conferences an
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individual could attend, and the introduction of a tiered system which limited
the range of conferences eligible for funding.
5. Analysis
To interpret our empirical material, we used SDT to explain how the types of
autonomous motivation researchers expressed were supported by specific
features in the design and use of the faculties’ MCS (summarised in Table 3).
The results of this analysis are presented below.
5.1. Performance evaluation and rewards
In both settings, we observed the provision of incentives such as project

funding, conference funding and promotions which, like many other organ-
isational reward systems (Bonner and Sprinkle, 2002), were contingent on
individual performance evaluation of measurable research outputs. Whilst SDT
suggests that tangible extrinsic rewards could undermine researchers’ auton-
omous motivation (Deci, 1971; Deci et al., 1999; Kunz and Linder, 2012), these
negative effects appeared to be avoided through several features of the rewards
and the associated performance evaluation.
First, the performance evaluations embedded within the reward systems are
‘employee driven’ rather than ‘organisation’ or ‘management driven’. This was
manifest through the date of evaluation not being specified ex ante or at specific
intervals (e.g. in annual reviews), and academics not being forced to apply.
Academics can self-nominate for project funding, conference funding or
promotion, if and when they feel they have achieved sufficient prior
performance to be successful. As researchers can choose whether to participate
in the incentive system or not, they exercise volition in deciding to have their
performance evaluated. Thus, compared with periodic performance evaluation
systems, systems which allow for self-nominated performance evaluation are
more likely to be perceived as autonomy-supportive, which preserve or even
enhance autonomous motivation.
Second, individuals are given lengthy periods of time to amass requisite levels
of performance. In contrast to annual reviews, which place pressure on
individuals to perform within a distinct and relatively short period of time, in
our study, the length of evaluation periods – the eligible time frames in which
an individuals’ performance ‘counted’ towards a reward – could span several
years (as in the case of project funding), or even an entire career (e.g. for
promotion). Lengthy time periods which reduce researchers’ perceived pressure
to meet deadlines are less likely to be perceived as controlling.
Third, extrinsic rewards may not be perceived by researchers as controlling
because they are not salient to their daily experience of doing research.
While rewards are granted for final outputs, because researchers retain the
freedom to choose how projects which lead to those outputs are initiated,
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Table 3
Management control systems found in case research units
FIST FSS
Administrative • ‘Laboratory’ organisational and • ‘Research strength’ organisational and

and cultural governance structures governance structures
mechanisms • Weekly meetings • Monthly research seminars
• Research vision planning • Training workshops
• Doctoral supervision structures, • Doctoral supervision structures,
policies and training training and policies
• Laboratory-based research clans • Other mentoring policies
• Facultywide research culture
Incentives • Project funding • Project funding

• Promotion incentives • Promotion incentives
• Conference funding
FSS, Faculty of Social Sciences; FIST, Faculty of Information Systems and Technology.
designed and executed, they are likely to still feel that their research
activities are self-determined. If anything, the rewards are most salient in
controlling the stage of the research process when researchers convert
outcomes from projects into specific research outputs (e.g. by encouraging a
researcher to translate their insights and findings into a peer-reviewed
publication) – a stage which is often perceived as more instrumental activity,
peripheral to the actual ‘doing of the research’. Thus, extrinsic rewards
appear to be only loosely related to tasks which are autonomously
motivated (i.e. the doing of the research), and more directly related to an
activity which are more externally regulated. This aligns with SDT theory
which suggests that while extrinsic rewards can be harmful for autono-
mously motivated behaviours, they can enhance activities which are more
instrumentally motivated (Sheldon et al., 2003; Gagne and Deci, 2005).
Fourth, researcher choice is facilitated through the use of informed peer
review to make discipline-based judgements of the holistic merit of a
candidate or project under evaluation. While peer review potentially creates
opportunities for subjective bias, it also allows for much greater variability
in what constitutes ‘research performance’ compared with evaluations
determined by standardised criteria, indices or rankings, which, in turn,
allows academics much greater freedom to experiment in how they conduct
their research.
To illustrate, one emerging issue we observed in FIST was where researchers
were critical of the planned introduction of a tier system to the conference
scheme. This had the effect of ranking conference publications and making
some of these ineligible for attendance funding for academics. As one
researcher explained:
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. . .conferences are very very important because it wouldn’t matter what, there’s
been a lot of talk in our faculty about grades of conferences and the faculty has
been trying to force people to go to only certain approved conferences and it’s been
totally disastrous, if you look at our publication rate this year, its down and I’d say
part of it is connected with this new policy. . . (Researcher, FIST)
The underlying tension towards the tiering of conference publications stemmed
from the fact that it was seen as a management initiative that not only imposed a
restriction of what constituted adequate research output, but also threatened
their individual freedom to ‘follow their own path’ (Researcher, FIST).
Fifth, the nature of the rewards offered could have a significant self-selecting
effect, increasing the prevalence of autonomously motivated researchers.
According to the participants, the appeal of the ‘research rewards’ was that
they were instrumental in satisfying academics’ desire to engage in more
research-related activities. For example, in FIST, funding for conferences was
highly valued by IT researchers because conferences were the primary places
where they could disseminate and receive feedback on their work. Likewise, in
FSS, project funding could be used to pay for teaching relief and research
assistants to help give researchers more time to do research. In both settings,
promotion was viewed as a means towards more research-oriented workloads
and easier access to further research funding.
In other organisational settings, offering opportunities to do more work may
not be attractive to employees; for these highly successful academics, who were
autonomously motivated to do research, the provision of work-oriented
rewards were. Unless other types of rewards are also provided, then it is highly
likely that employees who do not hold work-oriented motivation will, over the
long term, leave the organisation. Thus, through self-selection pressures, the
incentives encourage the prevalence of the same ‘passion for research’
motivation it relies upon.19
19
For a resource-constrained organisation, such as a university, the linkage between
autonomous motivation and work-related rewards has an additional significant
implication: it essentially converts what would normally be resource provision into a
highly cost effective incentive system. Whereas in typical incentive schemes, monetary
rewards are often used because, as a medium of exchange, money is highly instrumental
and has a highly liquid market external to the organisation where it can be used to
acquire almost any sort of desirable good (Bonner and Sprinkle, 2002); in the academic
setting, because of the presence of work-related motivation, high external liquidity is no
longer a necessary condition of the valence of the rewards. Managers can offer rewards
that can be principally used as a medium of exchange within the bounds of a market
internal to the organisation, that is, to acquire a specified range of goods related to work
activities. Something closer to a ‘closed incentive system’ is created, whereby the
provision of rewards, involving a transfer of value from the organisation to the
employee, has less leakage from the organisational bounds (as would be the case if the
reward was enjoyed privately by the employee) as researchers ‘cash in’ their rewards
within their ‘work worlds’.
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Finally, the research performance measurement systems which were more

periodic and standardised were used to evaluate the performance of research
groups, not individuals. Up until now, we have described attributes of the
performance evaluation embedded within the individual reward systems. In
addition to these systems, the university also collected standardised informa-
tion about the research outputs of each academic each year. In discussing the
impact of these systems with researchers, it became apparent that while
academics understood that the increased emphasis on the measurement of
individual research outcomes in the systems was necessary for the university to
report to government agencies, many felt that the systems had little personal
effect on them. When researchers were probed about institutional expectations
of their individual performance records, the only threshold was to publish
sufficient articles over a two-year span to be classified as ‘research active’,
which, as illustrated by the following comments, did not appear to be a
challenging target nor one with significant consequences if not met:
I don’t think we’re accountable to anyone. I mean if I was to sit around and do no
research. . . there’d be very little accountability because if I sat around and did
nothing all year, then, eventually, maybe, the faculty research office would say, oh,
you’re not research active anymore, what’s happened? And I’d say, oh well,
whatever. They wouldn’t be able to do anything. (Researcher, FSS)
This observation, that periodic performance measurement systems were not
being used to hold individual researchers accountable, was confirmed by senior
research administrators, who explained:
. . . there are some universities where the metrics drill down into management tools
but actually the metrics are assessment tools. They are not the management tools,
so you do need to watch metrics and you talk about metrics quite a lot at the
moment because we’re having a really big think about where we’re sitting, but you
don’t actually manage by metrics, metrics is a proxy account for what happened.
(University Research Administrator)
. . . if there is a researcher out there doing fantastically innovative stuff that’s not
represented here and I’m certainly willing to give credence to what’s happening out
there more than to the metric. The metric, for me, is always a follower rather than a
leader in determining what research performance is about. (Research Administra-
tor, FSS)
The research administrator went on to explain that because there are significant
and uncertain time lags between researchers’ activities and their measurable
research output, during which, the productivity of the researcher is ‘hidden’, and
annual measures of outputs were inappropriate proxies of the activity of an
individual. Instead, to make use of annual performance information:
. . . you aggregate it up. You need patterns of outcomes over a period of time, those
patterns of outcomes at a university level measured against your actual working
knowledge. (University Research Administrator)
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That is, while individual performance information was collected periodically

and systematically by the institution, it was not used to make evaluations of
individuals. Instead, the information was aggregated to illustrate group
performance and inform decision-making at the institution level, including
resource allocation; planning and evaluating the effectiveness of university-wide
initiatives, such as changes to organisational structure; and assessing the impact
of prospective changes to government policy on the university’s relative position
in the university sector. In addition, although relying upon group rather than
individual performance evaluation potentially makes the organisation more
vulnerable to the risk of opportunistic free-rider behaviour, we did not observe
this occurring. This seemed to be because the faculties did not only rely solely on
performance evaluation; instead the performance evaluation approaches were
supplemented by a range of other cultural and administrative mechanisms.
5.2. Cultural and administrative mechanisms
In both faculties, we observed a series of administrative and cultural

mechanisms focused on enabling social interaction and collaborative behav-
iour. Examples include participating in research seminars and formal meetings
to discuss and provide feedback on research ideas, engaging in ‘around-the-
corridor’ conversations, chatting about research at informal social gatherings,
supervising PhD candidates, participating in research training sessions,
working together on joint projects, mentoring by senior academics of
colleagues and students and promoting research cultures oriented around
collaboration, interaction and scholarship.
Administrative mechanisms were manifest in the organisational designs of
the laboratory and research strengths, PhD candidate policies, shared
workspaces, regular meetings and ‘research vision planning’, all of which
structured relationships and contact between particular individuals. These
relationships were either lateral between researchers with overlapping interests,
or vertical in mentoring relations between researchers of different experience
levels. Governance, accountability and monitoring (Malmi and Brown, 2008)
were enacted through the responsibilities assigned to senior academics and
doctoral supervisors in overseeing the behaviours of more junior members.
Formal research policy documents, ‘how-to’ workshops and doctoral training
acted as ‘task control’ by stipulating the processes by which research tasks were
expected to be performed (Malmi and Brown, 2008, 293). These facilitative
mechanisms enabled collaborative research to be performed by providing
researchers with the discipline-specific task knowledge of ‘doing research’ that
they needed to communicate, interact and work with other researchers in their
field, as well as specifying expectations of how these interactions should occur
(e.g. doctoral supervision).
Cultural control (Flamholtz et al., 1985; Pratt and Beaulieu, 1992; Malmi
and Brown, 2008) influenced social research behaviour – similar to adminis-
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trative mechanisms – by communicating expectations about roles, relations and

behaviours in social interactions in a more tacit way. For example, in FSS,
senior academics referred to the importance of their responsibility to develop
‘collaborative research cultures’ and ‘creating an atmosphere. . . where people
are sharing ideas’, they described norms and values about people being
sufficiently comfortable to openly talk about research ideas and concerns across
different levels within the hierarchy and across disciplinary boundaries. In the
FIST laboratories, the social expectations focused around the importance of
coordinated action. These expectations were enacted through smaller, more
homogenised research ‘clans’ (Ouchi, 1979, 1980) involving careful selection
and socialisation of new members to create groups of like-minded (and
similarly skilled) people; clear demarcation of laboratory members from faculty
members; the presence of strong ‘clan leaders’ with the social authority to
govern over each of the teams; and behavioural norms about how to engage in
‘collaborative competition’ and how to give rigorous critical feedback without
upsetting the cohesiveness of the team.
Both cultural and administrative mechanisms were aimed at enabling
proximity between researchers, both conceptually (by showing and encourag-
ing linkages between different types of researchers into particular topic areas),
as well as physical proximity (i.e. in open-plan workspaces, meetings,
workshops and seminars). This appears to have several positive implications
in terms of supporting autonomously motivated, self-regulating research
behaviour.
First, this provides the social environments conducive to enable the
socialisation by senior academics of newcomers to internalise certain values
about research. Having personal relations with professors held in high-esteem,
being physically close to ‘like-minded individuals’, and mapping conceptual
links between different individuals, satisfy needs for relatedness which is
necessary in facilitating the internalisation processes. Thus, the cultural–
administrative groupings of academics serve to encourage individuals, who
may not necessarily be intrinsically motivated by research, to identify, integrate
and adopt ‘passion for research’ values and motivations (Deci and Ryan, 1985;
Deci et al., 1989).
Second, these interactions also provided opportunity for face-to-face verbal
feedback from either colleagues or research supervisors. According to SDT,
whilst standardised performance evaluations often can be perceived as
controlling, constructive verbal reinforcement can have the opposite effect,
by providing positive competence-related feedback, which is experienced as
informational (Deci, 1971; Deci and Ryan, 1985). Finally, proximity amongst
researchers allows for a more lateral form of peer surveillance. Although
individuals’ core research work often is unobservable, facilitating collective
behaviours provides opportunities for researchers to view, evaluate and provide
feedback on each other’s work. SDT argues that it is not only the function of
elements, that is surveillance, or formal planning or monitoring, but also the
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interpersonal context in which they are administered which affects how they are
perceived by individuals (Ryan, 1982). Governance and surveillance, as enacted
by fellow researchers (either direct peers or research supervisors), is likely to be
perceived as more autonomy-supportive and less controlling than if it were
conducted by more bureaucratic managers.
6. Discussion and conclusion
Autonomous motivation is central to understanding why this particular

combination of MCS was effective in enabling research performance in the
university setting studied. It was the autonomously motivated ‘passion for
research’ that seemed to drive successful researchers to engage in the ‘doing’ of
research that led to performance. These motivations also seemed to shape the
way research was performed, in terms of the quality, intensity, and duration of
processes, and the self-regulatory nature of these activities.
Having employees who are autonomously motivated has a number of
beneficial implications for managing a university research environment. Most
importantly, autonomous motivation provokes self-determined and self-regu-
lated behaviour (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Ryan, 2000, 2002; Ryan and Deci,
2000), which seems particularly suited to knowledge-work tasks – such as
research – which are inherently difficult for an external person to monitor and
supervise as they often take years to complete.
In addition, academics who are autonomously motivated will direct their
effort towards engaging in high-quality research tasks, either because of the
inherent satisfaction in doing so, or because of a felt-responsibility to be
sufficiently diligent to ensure appropriate outcomes for users of their research.
This may in turn reduce the likelihood of research processes being compro-
mised to achieve short-term measurable performance outputs and reducing the
occurrence of more opportunistic behaviour. This would seem to lead to better
research performance over the long term.
We also observed that the ‘passion for research’ motivations were not
mutually exclusive, with some individuals holding two or three of the
orientations. In such cases, the motivations appear to complement one
another, with academics describing some tasks that they were intrinsically
motivated to do (e.g. creating ideas), and other situations where they drew on
their belief in the instrumental value of the project (e.g. grant applications).
While, it may not always be possible to recruit employees who hold each of the
orientations, employing a portfolio of academics within a research team, some
of which are task-oriented, and others more oriented towards the wider societal
implications of the research, could be another way to leverage the benefits of
each of the types of work-oriented values.
Our analysis shows that it is not only having individuals with the ‘right’ type
of autonomous motivation that facilitates academic research, but also having
the features of the MCS in place, including individual performance-contingent
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rewards, group level performance evaluation, administrative systems and

cultural structures, which satisfy researchers’ needs for autonomy, competence
and relatedness. Thus, SDT provides a rationale for why some of the
distinguishing features of the MCS observed in this study did not lead to
dysfunctional effects reported in other university settings.
Many in management accounting have been critical of how university
research has been measured, managed and governed, especially in terms of
more quantified performance evaluation systems (Willmott, 1995; Parker et al.,
1998; Neumann and Guthrie, 2002; Modell, 2003). However, often previous
literature has viewed research management in aggregate, and either focuses on
institutional or sector-level mechanisms, such as journal rankings, funding
policies, sector performance evaluation schemes (e.g. Parker et al., 1998;
Neumann and Guthrie, 2002; Modell, 2003; Macdonald and Kam, 2007) or on
surveys of individual’s opinion on general issues relating to academic life not
specific to research management, such as academic freedom, research quality
and stress (e.g. Prichard and Willmott, 1997; Pop-Vasileva et al., 2011). Our
study represents an attempt to understand the operational implications of these
macro-level concerns, by examining the nature and operational consequences
of MCS used within universities.
Specifically on the issue of performance evaluation, our study provides a
counter example to Ter Bogt and Scapens (2012) who reported that
performance measurement systems introduced in two different university
settings inhibited creativity and caused increases in stress, anxiety and pressure.
However, in contrast to the autonomy-supportive features observed in our
study, these systems periodically subjected researchers to quantified, ‘judge-
mental’ performance evaluations that compared individuals’ performance,
using quantitative, standardised measures, which then had individual-level
consequences (e.g. pressure to meet expectations to perform and adjustments to
individuals’ formal workloads). In addition, while elsewhere academics
perceived efforts to monitor their performance as an imposition of bureaucratic
administrators (Parker and Jary, 1995; Anderson, 2006), such effects do not
seem to be as significant when surveillance is enacted through more lateral,
peer-based forms of governance and possibly enhances motivation by provid-
ing competence-enabling feedback.
Consequently, it seems that the success of MCS in enabling university
research hinges on the ability of the constituent mechanisms to operate with an
illusion of no control. This illusion is achieved largely through the construction
of perceived distance, that is, a lack of proximity and salience between
management control and researchers’ behaviour. In the case of incentives, this
distance manifests both in a temporal sense, between the daily operating cycles
of research tasks, and the several-year time spans relevant to incentives, as well
as in a process sense, between the final rewarded output and long and
convoluted series of tasks and decisions that lead to the output. Likewise,
cultural–administrative mechanisms facilitate an organisational distance, by
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enabling a form of governance whereby there is very little management

performed by ‘managers’ or recognised administrators; often control is enacted
by fellow professionals (e.g. peers, senior academics) or, in the case of more
value-based control, by the individual themselves. It emerged through our
discussions with research managers that how the proximity is constructed, and
particularly maintaining a ‘distance’, seems to be an important and perhaps
even an intentional design feature of MCS in the knowledge work setting. As
one administrator put it:
I think that probably has to be a part of your research write up. . . the kind of
disguise, almost, the invisible knowledge that goes into supporting research
management. (Research administrator, FSS)
This research has a number of limitations, which provide potential
avenues for further research. The methodological limitations include the
difficulties in controlling for researcher and interviewee personal bias. In
addition, while we believe our results have analytical generalisability (Yin,
2003), the findings are derived only from two successful research units which
may not be representative or typical of experiences in other university
settings. Furthermore, we have not yet compared poor-performing research
units to establish the extent to which our results about the nature, use or
consequences of MCS hold. Also, while the study’s participants conducted
both teaching and research activities, the empirical scope of the study did
not encompass the MCS which was targeted towards their teaching. Given
the competing pressures individuals may perceive between these activities,
future research could also consider the motivational effects of a wider set of
MCS related to both research and teaching. Finally, further empirical work
could examine a range of other types of research settings to see how the
results translate across other forms of research activity, or other academic
disciplines.
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Accounting and Finance

The illusion of no control: management control systems

Nicole C. Sutton, David A. Brown

Autonomous motivation, a fundamental factor inﬂuencing research success,

Key words: Autonomous motivation; Management control systems; Research

JEL classification: I23, M40

4.2. Management control systems

4.2.1. Management control in the Faculty of Social Sciences

In FSS, the focus of management eﬀort appears directed towards bringing

The paper’s structure is as follows. Section 2 contains the literature review,

2.1. Motivation and research productivity

2.2. Self-determination theory

Understanding how diﬀerent types of motivation are inﬂuenced by intra-

rewards, group level performance evaluation, administrative systems and

enabling a form of governance whereby there is very little management

3.1. Exploratory case study method

speciﬁcally chosen using a theoretical sampling approach (Eisenhardt, 1989).

3.2. Data sources and collection

A key methodological feature of SDT is the primacy of the ‘self’ as a

3.3. Data analysis

University research administrator 1

1. Could you tell me about your role within the faculty?

research units, including analyses of the MCS elements, as well as

4. Case study findings

4.1. Researcher motivation

In both faculties, interviewees highlighted the importance of their own

4.2. Management control systems

4.2.1. Management control in the Faculty of Social Sciences

In FSS, the focus of management eﬀort appears directed towards bringing

vertical relationships between PhD candidates and their supervisors, which

4.2.2. Management control in the Faculty of Information Systems and

The management of research in FIST revolved around the strategic

previously, each charged with the responsibility of developing the research

The laboratory members described the development of these cultures as a

5.1. Performance evaluation and rewards

In both settings, we observed the provision of incentives such as project

Administrative • ‘Laboratory’ organisational and • ‘Research strength’ organisational and

Incentives • Project funding • Project funding

Finally, the research performance measurement systems which were more

That is, while individual performance information was collected periodically

5.2. Cultural and administrative mechanisms

In both faculties, we observed a series of administrative and cultural

trative mechanisms – by communicating expectations about roles, relations and

6. Discussion and conclusion

Autonomous motivation is central to understanding why this particular

rewards, group level performance evaluation, administrative systems and

enabling a form of governance whereby there is very little management

Bland, C. J., A. M. Weber-Main, S. M. Lund, and D. A. Finstad, 2005, The Research-

Sheldon, K. M., D. B. Turban, K. G. Brown, M. R. Barrick, and T. A. Judge, 2003,

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