Organisational Control: Bureaucratic and Cultural Control

Running head: TMA 02: WORKING IN THE ORGANISATION
TMA 02: Working in the Organisation
Student’s name:
Name of the university:
Author’s note:

1TMA 02: WORKING IN THE ORGANISATION
Task 1: Essay
The organisational control means the process through an organisation gives shares their
decision to its members and subunits to meet the organisational objectives and goals. If the
management can properly design the control, it can lead to the best performance. In addition,
organisational control involves in four basic steps, establish the standards, measure the
performance, compare the standards and take right actions. Employees of the organisation
behave in accordance to the set goals. Managers monitor and evaluate how the employees are
converting inputs into the outputs and they also check whether the quality of the service or
products is improving. As suggested by Knights and Willmott (2012), managers within the
workplace must be innovative in outlook and it encourages the risk-taking ability of the
managers. Knights and Willmott (2012) segregated the organisational control into four major
categories, a) direct supervision b) bureaucratic procedures c) cultural control and d) output and
self-regulation. These are the different methods that managers can look to regulate the actions of
the employees so that the staffs can be consistent with their standards and goals. These different
ways have their respective control power and motivational technique. In this essay, Bureaucratic
Control and Cultural Control have been discussed with their benefits and challenges within the
organisation.
The German sociologist, famous Max Weber described first about bureaucratic control
within the organisation and his concept of bureaucratic control emerged from the efficient and
rational response to issues of large-scale social and economic activities. Khorasani and
Almasifard (2017), supported Weber by commenting that bureaucracy is goal-oriented control
within the organisation featured by hierarchical communication and management system.
Bureaucracy provides the extensive division of staffs into some specialised works. Max Weber

2TMA 02: WORKING IN THE ORGANISATION
observed bureaucracy as the impersonal rules of the organisation and standardised procedures.
Employees need to able to perform well before determined standards. Max Weber provides
complex and broken down structure for the division of employees and he also propagates the
effort of coordinated and directed rules. According to (Kennedy et al. 2017), bureaucratic control
can be defined as a formal system of procedures and written rules of the management.
Bureaucratic control methods rely primarily on the units and individuals within the organisation
that can establish bureaucratic standards. Within an organisation, the bureaucratic control
provides help in budgetary control as this is the rule of allocating the financial resources.
Managers sometimes encourage the growth of subunits within the organisation as this group may
improve in capital spending. As stated by Erasmus (2014), bureaucracy helps to divide the work
and each staff work on their specialisation. Managers in this control system keep the records and
acts as the draft. Personal relations are maintained in a formal way in the workplace in all
departments.
Bureaucracy provides the benefits when the employees are selected based on the
technical competence and training is provided based on administrative procedure. Bureaucracy
control from the management provides the advantage of having a specialised workforce as the
members of the workforce are assigned to specialised tasks of their genre (Kennedy et al. 2017).
In addition, bureaucracy control creates structure within the organisation specifying the
responsibilities and duties of the employees as this type of organisation follows the commanding
hierarchy within the workplace. Decision-making of the managers in the routine situation is very
important in bureaucracy as objectivity is ensured by setting the decision-making criteria. The
major features of bureaucracy are the rules, specialisation, structure and regulation; therefore
these are all ensured training and stability within the organisation. The structural framework