Control package redefined: An internal and an external control package in the context of sustainability

Abstract

<p> In control package research, this package has exclusively been seen as supporting the goal attainment of a given organization with controls directed at its employees. Reporting a case study in one company, this paper shows how sustainability is used as a complete control package: in cultural control, planning, cybernetic controls, rewards and compensation, and administrative controls. The benefits of operationalizing a control package under one theme include consistency in promoting this theme and its use as an integral part of operations. However, the control package approach to sustainability can result in the theme being defined on the basis of the perspective of the industry and company in question as well as the control package, not on the basis of stakeholder needs. Alternative ideas on sustainability, such as the potential to impact society and nature widely (not only from the perspective of the industry and the company), tradeoffs within sustainability, and complex, eternal, non-practical-management-related issues difficult to address with management controls, are considered less. The study provides a novel framework of these kinds of issues in the form of a so termed external control package that integrates the idea of the control package with wider stakeholder expectations as explicit goals. Moreover, it is acknowledged, surprisingly, that both company personnel and outside constituents can be controlled with the package.</p>