Organizational Change and the Role and Use of Management Controls: Evidence from the 2008 Economic Crisis and the Banking Industry

The economic crisis in 2008 had widespread effects on the banking industry including changes in various management control elements. This paper reports on a qualitative field study of management controls and organizational change due to the 2008 economic crisis in 6 financial organizations in two countries. The paper identifies and explains the roles of different management controls in the organizational change processes initiated after an economic crisis. It shows how management control elements were used to change interpretive schemes and control archetypes to reflect a new operating environment. The findings show that use of management controls in organizational change is critical. The type and severity of crisis influences what elements of the management control package are used, how they are coupled together and characteristics of the resulting control archetypes. In one context the organizations moved from result based management controls archetype to an action based management controls archetype. Other management controls like budgeting remained unchanged to provide stability when going through turbulent change.