Victim or culprit? Rethinking the role of control in the relationship between control, information and information technology

Abstract

Although the relationships between control and Information Technology (IT) have been
largely studied by academic research in organization and information systems management,
past research have mainly focused on “strong coupling” situations between the controlled
activity and its representation, offering a restricted vision of the role of the controlled,
often considered as the victim of disciplinary control practices. This conceptual
paper revisits IT-based control thanks to a reinterpretation of the relationship between
control, information and IT. Thanks to an in-depth analysis of extant literature, coupled to
the use of a conceptual Foucauldian framework, this reflection introduces the power of the
subordinate as a producer of the information and representations that are required by the
exercise of control. This reinterpretation enables to conceptualize the role of the controlled
in “loose coupling” situations, which have been far less studied but which tend to develop
as a result of an increase in decentralization and interactions between organizational
actors and technology. This paper develops the idea that the object of control is neither the
subordinate nor their activity, but in fact a technologically- and socially-built representation
by the subordinate of their activity. In doing so, this reflection invites reviewing the
role of organizational actors (the controller and the controlled) in relationships between
control and technology, and suggests, more broadly, an evolution of the dimensions of
control, whose conceptual stakes and practical contributions are specified.