The contribution of management control to the development of organizational learning: A theoretical approach

Abstract

The accelerated change in the business environment, whether economic, technological, political or social, requires companies to adopt their management processes, including management control, to keep up with the changes and develop their learning capacity. Organizational learning and management control have a complex relationship. According to Kloot (1997), the definitions of control systems and organizational learning share the same objectives because they both deal with the way an organization transforms and adapts to its environment. Furthermore, Dent (1991) supports the idea that control systems can make a dynamic contribution manage organizational transformation by describing a number of new opportunities. But this link needs to be clarified. The purpose of this paper is to provide answers about how management control and organizational learning are related. In this situation, based on a review of the literature, we want to develop a theoretical model that could clarify to what extent the implementation of a management control tool can become a key tool in the development of organizational learning. As a result of this work, we proposed, based on a review of the literature, a model that attempted to clarify the relationship between management control tools, namely planning, monitoring and analysis tools, and organizational learning. This attempt to develop a theoretical model should be followed by a quantitative study using a questionnaire to allow for an empirical evaluation of our model.

Keywords: Organizational learning; theoretical model ; management control.

JEL Classification : M40

Paper type: Theoretical Research