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Cited by 2,305Management and Organizational StudiesManagement Theory and PracticeAccounting and Organizational Management

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 36 of the 38 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Tightening the Iron Cage: Concertive Control in Self-Managing Teams

Barker, James R.·1993·Administrative Science Quarterly
DOI 10.2307/2393374
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Abstract

In this paper, I provide an ethnographic account of how an organization’s control system evolved in response to a managerial change from hierarchical, bureaucratic control to concertive control in the form of self-managing teams. The study investigates how the organization’s members developed a system of value-based normative rules that controlled their actions more powerfully and completely than the former system. I describe the organization and its members and provide a detailed account of the dynamics that emerged as concertive control became manifest through the members’ interactions. This account depicts how concertive control evolved from the value consensus of the company’s team workers to a system of normative rules that became increasingly rationalized. Contrary to some proponents of such systems, concertive control did not free these workers from Weber’s iron cage of rational control. Instead, the concertive system, as it became manifest in this case, appeared to draw the iron cage tighter and to constrain the organization’s members more powerfully.

Overview

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Crossref · 10.2307/2393374

Cites

36 of 36 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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Metadata

Authors
Barker, J. R.
Affiliations
Marquette University (US)
Corresponding author
Barker, James R.
ORCID
Barker, James R.
Venue
Administrative Science Quarterly
Publisher
JSTOR
Published
1993-09
Volume
38
Issue
3
Pages
408
ISSN
0001-8392 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.2307/2393374
OpenAlex
W2006770647
Cited by
2,305
References
38
Citations by year
2026: 53 · 2025: 70 · 2024: 78 · 2023: 55 · 2022: 54 · 2021: 106 · 2020: 75 · 2019: 89 · 2018: 73 · 2017: 104 · 2016: 101 · 2015: 73 · 2014: 77 · 2013: 92 · 2012: 121
FWCI
32.38
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Administrative Science Quarterly (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management and Organizational Studies
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management Theory and Practice
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Accounting and Organizational Management
Keywords
self-managing teams, iron cage, rational control, Weberian bureaucracy, organizational control systems, normative rules, value consensus, rationalization, organizational change, employee autonomy

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Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.