Paper presented at the Academy of Management Conference 2014, Philadelphia, USA.

Jens Rennstam (jens.rennstam@fek.lu.se) Department of Business Administration

Lund University

and

Dan Kärreman Copenhagen Business School

Control work in complex organizations – constructive disobedience, translation

and peer reviewing in a high-tech firm

Abstract:

The extant research on organizational control builds on the assumption of vertical control – managers are thought to develop orders, rules and norms to control the operating core. Yet it is claimed that work becomes increasingly “knowledge intensive” and that organizations rely heavily for their productivity on the knowledge and creativity of their work force. When analyzing this type of “knowledge work”, the strong focus on vertical control creates theoretical limitations because it fails to account for the important operative and horizontal interactions upon which many contemporary organizations depend. Drawing on practice theory and an ethnographic study of engineering work, this paper theorizes control as a form of work that does not only belong to formal management, but is dispersed among various work activities, including horizontal ones. The article introduces the idea of control work as a key practice in contemporary organizations, and the concepts of constructive disobedience, translation, and peer reviewing as ways of understanding how control work is exercised at the operative level. Our conceptual framework thereby offers a complement to traditional theories of control by bringing out how expert knowledge and local interactions play a central role in the control of work.

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Traditional understandings of organizational control – that is, understandings of “the processes

and methods by which an organization’s members determine what things get done and how they

are done” (Johnson & Gill, 1993: x) – are based on the assumption of a vertical division of labor

through a separation between the conception and execution of work. It is assumed that formally

appointed managers are the conceivers and employees the executors of work, and that control

flows from top to bottom. Although it has been claimed that this division of labor remains

strong and is still relevant today in certain contexts (e.g. Jones, 2000), there has also been a surge

in work claiming that the division has lost much of its relevance. Many organizations today are

complex, contested social systems (Kuhn, 2008), organized in projects (Hogdson, 2004), with

distributed leadership (Fairhurst, 2008), increasingly intent on creating worker participation (Stohl

and Cheney, 2001), teamwork (Cohen and Bailey, 1997), and empowerment (Styhre, 2001). The

work in these organizations becomes increasingly complex and “knowledge intensive,” i.e. based

on non-routine problem solving and relying heavily for its productivity on the expertise and

creativity of the employees (e.g. Starbuck, 1992; Alvesson, 2004). These statements about the

contemporary workplace set the stage for the present paper, which asks the question: how is

work controlled under these circumstances?

In the type of “knowledge-intensive organizations” hinted at above, conception of work is no

longer separated from its execution and the assumption of vertical control becomes problematic

as it fails to account for the important horizontal interactions among those who are to execute

the work (Barley, 1996). As a result, we need to acknowledge that control may appear in multiple

forms and delve into the operative and often horizontal practices where work is performed to

expand our understanding of organizational control (cf. Barley and Kunda, 2001; Kuhn, 2008).

Drawing on practice theory and an ethnographic study of engineering work, this study theorizes

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control as a form of work that does not only belong to formal management, but is dispersed

among various work activities, including horizontal ones. The article thus introduces the idea of

control work as a key and dispersed practice in contemporary organizations, and the concepts of

constructive disobedience, translation, and peer reviewing as ways of understanding how control work is

exercised at the operative level.

Control in contemporary organizational studies

Although the blurred boundary between conception and execution and the increasing importance

of horizontal interaction is widely acknowledged (Manz and Sims, 1987; Barker, 1993; 1999;

Katzenbach and Smith, 1993; Ezzamel and Willmott, 1998, Hargadon and Bechky, 2006; Kuhn

and Jackson, 2008), the prevailing understanding of organizational control is still developed from

studies that focus mainly on formal managerial/vertical practice, which has resulted in a limited

understanding of control between people on the same formal hierarchical level (Loughry, 2010;

Kirsch and Choudhury, 2010). This vertical bias prevails from Taylor’s (1911) ideas of direct

control via Weber’s (1922) bureaucracy and Mintzberg’s (1979) standardization of output

processes and skills, to more recent ideas of controlling subjectivities through normative control

(Kunda, 1992) and identity regulation (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002).

Identity- and normative control are particularly associated with knowledge work, whose

requirement of esoteric expertise and focus on non-routinized work and problem-solving

arguably make the work process too complex to be efficiently controlled by direct or bureaucratic

means. The exercise of normative control has fruitfully been analyzed, particularly as attempts at

producing a specific culture through socialization practices (e.g. Kunda, 1992), and in terms of

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attempts of aligning individuals’ identification with the perceived identity of the organization (e.g.

Pratt, 2000; Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Alvesson and Kärreman, 2007; Anteby, 2008; special

issues on identity in Academy of Management Review, 2000, and Organization, 2008). However, in

common with their more traditional counterparts, studies of normative control and identity

regulation also focus on managerial work rather than work of the “operative core.” As a result,

we are left with many useful concepts for making sense of control as it appears in management

practice, but a limited vocabulary for making sense of how it appears at the site where it is

claimed that the most important action of knowledge work is – in the horizontal operative practice.

Horizontal control in the operative practice.

Horizontal control is understood here as control that is exerted among people on the same

formal hierarchical level, and operative practice is understood as the practices that the “operative

core” engages in to produce the basic products of the organization (Mintzberg, 1979). Horizontal

control in operative practice is typically not discussed in its own right, but either as something

that is necessary for efficient organization to take place, or something that is the result of formal

management design. For example, when work becomes more complex, “mutual adjustment”

among people in the operating core becomes increasingly necessary (Thompson, 1967;

Mintzberg, 1989). Similarly, good “teamwork” (e.g. Katzenbach and Smith, 1993; Cohen and

Bailey, 1997) and “self-management” (e.g. Manz and Sims, 1987) are typically seen as conditions

for the effective organization of work that cannot be controlled by direct surveillance or

bureaucratic rules.

Thus, the dominant scholarship on organizational control has paid much attention to what

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managers should do to facilitate and optimize horizontal control, but failed to analyze control

from the perspective of those horizontal operative practices that are deemed so important

(Barley, 1996). Arguably, mutual adjustment and teamwork are necessary for knowledge work to

function efficiently. But these practices are typically treated in uncritical ways (for an exception,

see e.g. McKinlay and Taylor, 1996), and we need further conceptual development to better

understand how horizontal control works in the operative practice.

Despite the perspectival shortcomings pointed at above, there are, of course, concepts that relate

to horizontal control. One well-known concept is the notion of “professional control.” A central

feature of professional control – i.e. the control that is thought to guide professional work – is

that it is horizontal: it is exercised by peers rather than by managers (Løwendahl, 1997; Alvesson,

2004). As Freidson (1975) notes, “the professional model of control” stresses that “instead of

being controlled and directed by superiors who are not trained to perform the basic productive

work, it [i.e. professional work] is directed and controlled by the workers themselves” (p. 9; see

also Mintzberg, 1979). However, the conceptualization of this professional self-control is

typically geared toward the institutional rather than interpersonal and operative level, and thereby

fails to pay explicit attention to the operative practice. The emphasized methods of control are

the development of “professional associations” (Abbot, 1991) that give rise to “professional

norms” (Wilensky, 1964), “restrictive licensing, formal training and educational requirements”

(Freidson, 1975). It is thus mainly control in terms of “institutional circumstances” (Freidson,

2001: 12) that is debated in this literature, whereas less attention is paid to forms of control that

emerge as work gets done.

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Another body of literature that has addressed horizontal relationships consists of ethnographic

studies of various types of technical work (e.g. Orr, 1996; Barley, 1996). Often, the notion of

“communities of practice” (see Lave and Wenger, 1991) is drawn upon, organization is seen as a

collective accomplishment and a horizontal division of labor is seen as central for the

organization of work and transfer of knowledge (Barley, 1996; Bechky, 2003; Hargadon and

Bechky, 2006). Also, and importantly, this scholarship tends to stress the importance of studying

practice for understanding organizational activity (see also Brown and Duguid, 1991; 2001;

Schatzki et al, 2001; Kuhn and Jackson, 2008).

This ethnographically inspired research has enabled new insights into operative practice and

thereby produced an important counterweight to the more managerially or institutionally oriented

literatures. However, this scholarship does not explicitly address issues of control, and thereby

reproduces an overly unitarist view of the organization (Contu and Willmott, 2003; Delbridge,

2010) that neglects the relationship between vertical and horizontal aspects. For example,

Hargadon and Bechky (2006) identify “help seeking” and “help giving” as central activities in

operative knowledge work and frame them as “creative activities;” Kuhn and Jackson (2008)

fruitfully discuss how employees engage in “instruction” and “improvisation” to solve problems,

and frame this in terms of “knowledge accomplishing activities;” and Orr (1996) identifies the

importance of “storytelling” between technicians and frames this mainly in terms of knowledge

sharing and how membership in communities is established. Such a framing affords insight into

how everyday work is a collective accomplishment, but neglects the element of struggle over

influence that is inherent in organizational processes (Fleming and Spicer, 2008) and the

relationship between vertical and horizontal aspects of organization. Thus, we largely side with

this body of literature, but similar ethnographic studies are needed that, however, also

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acknowledge organization as a struggle and develop a vocabulary of control that is applicable to

the operative work in knowledge intensive settings.

We have so far briefly reviewed literature that relates to but does not explicitly address issues of

operative horizontal control. An exception to this shortcoming is the critical literature on teams.

This scholarship contains a discussion of control that emerges not explicitly as a result of formal

management, but inside operative teams (e.g. Ezzamel and Willmott, 1998; Sewell, 1998; Barker,

1993). The perhaps most fruitful attempt to conceptualize team control was made by Barker

(1993; 1999), who in an ethnographic study of the introduction of teamwork in a manufacturing

firm observed how employees in the teams developed norms for controlling their own behavior.

In order to understand how this form of control operates he used the concept of “concertive

control” (see also Tompkins and Cheney, 1985). Concertive control tones down the role of

managerial practice and shows instead how the employees are highly active in the production of

control in the shape of rules of behavior. Control is seen as the result of the group members’

own negotiation about what constitutes good work; the members of the group “act in concert with

each other to create a mechanism for controlling their own behavior” (Barker, 1999: 35).

Concertive control is to be seen as an unobtrusive (e.g. Tompkins and Cheney, 1985) and largely

normative (e.g. Kunda, 1992) form of control that operates through the inculcation of values

rather than direct or bureaucratically based control of behavior.

Concertive control is a useful contribution to the understanding of horizontal control. It is not

without drawbacks, however. First, it is developed based on a study of manufacturing work (see

also Batt, 2001). Although this does not make the concept irrelevant in a more knowledge

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intensive context, one can expect operative control of knowledge work to take a different shape.

Second, concertive control is horizontal normative control, explaining how norms and rules for

legitimate behavior are formed in teams vertical methods of control are distant. But norms are

only one among many sources of control. They do not account for work-related knowledge as a

source of control, which is especially central in knowledge-intensive work where knowledge of

the operative practice is likely to be an important resource for exercising control. Therefore,

norms may set the stage for work, but they do not necessarily explain how control operates in the

interaction between employees (and managers) when operative work gets done.

To sum up, in terms of theoretical development of operative horizontal control, there are indeed

ideas and concepts. But with some exceptions (e.g. Barker, 1993; 1999; Ezzamel and Willmott,

1998), they tend to be either overly managerialistic, or overly “coordinationistic.” The former

conceive of horizontal control mainly as a function of managerial activity and focus on what is

seen as necessary for accomplishing complex work, such as self-management, teamwork,

commitment, empowerment and involvement. The latter delve deeper into operative processes,

but fail to explicitly address issues of control in favor of a more unitaristic vocabulary of

coordination, knowledge accomplishment and creativity. In other words, they neglect that there is

an element of “struggle” (Fleming & Spicer, 2008) between control forms in organizational

processes and do not frame horizontal activities in terms of control.

A practice-based approach to make sense of polymorphous control

This article considers organizational control to include practices in operative horizontal work,

situated in a struggle over influence that takes place in relationship with vertical/managerial

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activities. We thereby acknowledge the simultaneous operation of and intersection between

different forms of control. There is a strong focus in the literature on control as something that

theoretically might take on different shapes but empirically tends to be viewed as fairly

homogenous and dominated by one particular form. This makes it difficult to pay attention to

the polymorphous ways in which control is exercised in complex organizations. There are ample

reasons to develop vocabularies and perspectives on control that accommodate empirical realities

were control forms are blunt, but plentiful, and were work to some degree consist of control work,

i.e. attempts to align and make sense of the various control forms at play. We suggest that

focusing on the variety of and the interfaces between forms of control may provide an

opportunity to rethink control in ways that open up for understanding control forms as

interconnected (but perhaps in disjointed ways) and consequently as helpful tools for making

sense of control at the modern work place. Thus, a case can be made for understanding various

forms of control as simultaneously active, at least in reasonably complex organizations. Indeed,

Kunda (1992) maintains that certain elements of bureaucratic control remain in place, even when

normative control is predominant (see also Kärreman and Alvesson 2004). In the company

studied by Kunda, normative control is supplemented by bureaucratic and utilitarian control. To

use Mintzberg’s (1989) typology, a battery of control forms seems to be used in many

contemporary organizations, typically blending standardized output measures with standard

operating procedures (standardized work procedures) and a professionalized work force

(standardized knowledge). In such settings it might be counter-productive to assume the

existence of a dominating form. Indeed, different control forms may be linked to, and supporting

and sustaining each other, rather than subdued and marginalized by a dominant one.

In our aim to highlight the dynamic interface between vertical and horizontal forms of control

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we draw on “practice theory.” Practice theory is not one unified body of knowledge but rather a

theoretical orientation (Ortner, 1984; Blackler and Regan, 2009) that generally advocates a focus

on process and practice as a method for making sense of organizational phenomena (e.g. Brown

and Duguid, 2001; Kuhn and Jackson, 2008), and a view of practice as the site where knowledge

as well as social order is accomplished in organizations (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Lave and

Wenger, 1991; Orr, 1996; Schatzki et al, 2001). In addition, it has some characteristics from

which we bring out strands that support our aim to make new sense of how knowledge work is

controlled. We shall briefly outline these below.

First, practice theory is a useful backdrop for us because it makes up a complement to the focus

on symbolism and norms (Schatzki, 1996; Reckwitz, 2002; Blackler and Regan, 2009). A focus on

norms is relevant in many ways, but it has a tendency to assume that although norms and ideas

are invisible, they are identifiable in humans and presumed to have certain implications for those

who are subjected to them. The benefit of a practice approach is that it is based on something

visible and, thus, observable. As Barnes (2001: 17) notes: “to insist that the bedrock of all order

and agreement is agreement in practice is to cite something public and visible, something that is

manifest in what members do.” This is not to say that practices are objectively describable or that

the unobservable is irrelevant, but practice theory strives to offer something beyond the

ideational and symbolic. For us who are interested in organizational control, a practice

perspective thus enables us to go beyond a focus on normative consensus and conceptualize

what people actually do when they work in terms of control.

Second, influenced by ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967), practice theory rejects a priori

assumptions about the impact of structures, norms and formal arrangements in favor of studying

social phenomena from within (Lynch, 2001), thus enabling a critique of the assumption in most

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control literature about the omnipotent relevance of the formal vertical order. Yet, it does not

neglect the vertical order, but invites to analysis of the relationship between vertical and

horizontal practices (Lundholm, Rennstam & Alvesson, 2012). The relevance of the formal is

analyzed in so far as it is represented and observable on the everyday level where it is expected to

have an impact. This is what Coulter (2001): 38) refers to as “the occasional relevance of the

macro-social level to our everyday lives.” In other words, from a practice perspective, the

relevance of the vertical system of control should be analyzed based on how it is represented and

observable in the operative practice where it is supposed to have effect.

Third, practice theory enables a theorization of control as a practice that may be carried out not

only by formally appointed managers, but by anyone in an organization. Put differently,

controlling may be understood as what Schatzki (1996: 89ff.) calls a “dispersed practice.”

Schatzki makes a distinction between and “integrative” and “dispersed” practices, where the

former make up specific domains of social life, such as formal managing, engineering, policing,

farming, doctoring etc., while the latter are widespread and permeate various activities of social

life, including the integrative practices. For example, “discussing” and “asking” are dispersed

practices because discussing and asking are parts of policing, engineering, doctoring etc., although

they may adopt different forms in, say, policing than doctoring. Using this distinction between

dispersed and integrative practices, controlling is seen here not as a practice exclusively associated

with formal management, but as a dispersed practice that permeates engineering work in general.

That is, treating controlling as a dispersed practice implies that formal management as well as the

horizontal operative doings of the engineers involves “control work.” By drawing on these tenets

of practice theory, we set the stage for a more open interrogation of how work, and in our case

knowledge work, is controlled.

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The next section describes the method for our enterprise, followed by the empirical part of the

paper where we present three episodes in which horizontal control, conceptualized as peer

reviewing, intersects with vertical control. After this we turn to a discussion of control work in

terms of constructive disobedience, translation, and peer reviewing.

The site and method of the study

The site in which this study was conducted is a fairly large (about 800 employees) organization –

“GlobalTech” – in the highly dynamic telecom industry. 76 interviews with managers and

engineers were conducted. They lasted between one and two hours and were recorded and

transcribed. The interviews were of a semi-structured kind and discussion oriented. This means

that there was an overarching agenda but that the direction of the discussion partly depended on

the response of the interviewee. Questions were asked such as: How would you describe your

work? How are you doing it? How would you describe your work with others? What do you do

when you encounter problems? Later interviews were more specific and asked about phenomena

that had been observed by the researcher, such as the role of deadlines and the quality control

system reported further down in this paper. In addition to the interviews, the first author

conducted 45 observations of various meetings, with an emphasis on the operative engineers’

weekly work meetings (20 work meetings were observed). The meetings lasted for 1-2 hours,

except one that lasted for a whole day. Most meeting observations, and all used in this paper,

were recorded and transcribed. During the most intense phase of the study, the first author spent

29 workdays at GlobalTech, interviewing people or observing meetings, but also just “hanging

out” (Dingwall, 1997) with them, i.e. sitting in their laboratory observing their work, sometimes

chatting, going for coffee breaks and having lunch with them. In order to gain insight into their

work from an everyday, more continuous perspective, one engineer was shadowed (Czarniawska,

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2007) for a full workweek.

The majority of the employees at GlobalTech are highly educated engineers who develop

technology that will be used in mobile phones. This technology is developing fast and work is

characterized by innovation and uncertainty of how long it will take to finish projects because

many things are done for the first time. Furthermore, a high degree of both formal and

contextual knowledge is required to perform tasks, and as a result the organization to a large

extent depends on the people in the “operating core” (Mintzberg, 1979) to come up with ideas of

how to improve the product. In other words, the work is to be characterized as knowledge-

intensive (e.g. Alvesson, 2004). GlobalTech is very much one of those firms that Barley (1996)

and others refer to when they argue that knowledge is transmitted within communities of practice

rather than through rules and procedures. This is one of the types of work where the traditional

division between conception and execution breaks down, since engineers tend to develop

expertise that makes it difficult for formal managers to tell them how to do a good job (e.g.

Barley, 1996; Orr, 1996). Thus, as a vehicle for exploring how control appears in the operative

knowledge intensive practice, the engineering work at GlobalTech is a highly relevant example.

Although the work at GlobalTech is characterized by innovation, one should avoid getting too

romantic about it. The engineers of the telecommunications industry cannot innovate in just any

way they like. There are formal requirements for technology development as well as formal

management practices directed towards the engineers’ work. In terms of the former,

requirements are developed by the 3GPPi, an international partnership between a number of

officially recognized standardization organizations whose purpose is to “prepare, approve and

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maintain globally applicable Technical Specifications [...] for a 3rd Generation Mobile System”ii.

An important objective of the 3GPP is thus to standardize requirements and specifications for

mobile telecommunication. An example of such requirement that affects the engineers at

GlobalTech regards the regulation of the radio frequency that can be used by a telecom device.

The device must not “leak” signals to such an extent that it disturbs other devices that use the

atmosphere for communication. In this sense the 3GPP is a form of institutional control that sets

the scene on which GlobalTech acts by prescribing in broad terms what it means do develop a

functional technology.

Moving to the firm-level and formal management, there are practices intent on controlling the

product development work. It is the task of the higher echelons of the project organization –

which consists of three levels, let us name them top- middle- and low-level – to formulate

requirements for the new products. The requirements are of a rather general character, such as

whether the technology should support a camera, a USB-port or that it should have a certain size

memory. These must be broken down onto the various sub-projects. The process of breaking

down requirements is thus intended to filter down through the project hierarchy to the low-level

managers, who are the ones who interact with the engineers and do the follow-up on their work.

When asked about how work is controlled at GlobalTech, project managers typically stressed the

importance of goals, both in terms of what needs to be done (although this “what” is quite

general) and when it needs to be finished. Time was put forth as a particularly important aspect.

Managers pointed out that “this company is controlled by time to a large extent” (project

manager). The management of projects was thus said to revolve around formulating, breaking

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down, and following up goals. Somewhat simplified, they were basically describing traditional

project management techniques where the definition of goals and objectives is emphasized (e.g.

Kerzner, 1992; Maylor, 2003), and where goal fulfillment is the main method of evaluation

(Thomas, 2000). Following up goals and making sure people finish on time were often stressed as

the most important methods of controlling the project work, as one manager stated: “[project

management] is about following up, understanding if we’re on track or not.” Or as put by

another: “leadership to me is to set up goals and to follow them up.”

Examples of goals tended to be rather technical, such as “[The project] shall deliver a [...]

reference design, including the new circuit [called] Steven2 and the new GSM RF ASIC [called]

Tina” (from project description). But at a general level, they often boiled down to the following

premise: smaller, less power consuming and cheaper. As one project manager put it: “they are

truths.”

The analytical process

In light of these formal elements, a research design was developed that aimed at bringing in the

operative work of the engineers (cf. Barley and Kunda, 2001). More specifically, an ethnographic

approach was taken to pursue this goal (Schwartzman, 1993; Prasad, 2005). Particularly, the

research design was influenced by the ethnographic methods of a) developing an understanding

of the field by being open to what the empirical material has to offer in terms of new insights,

and b) creating these insights by being close to the object of study (for studies employing a

similar approach, see for example Kunda, 1992; Orr, 1996; Ashcraft, 2001). “Empirical

openness” and “empirical proximity” thus guided the study, and the focus on the operative work

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privileged observation over secondary sources such as interviews or documents (Carlile, 2002;

Kuhn and Jackson, 2008).

The aim of our analysis is less to identify a gap in our understanding of organizational control

and more of an attempt to problematize dominant understandings (Alvesson & Sandberg 2011,

Alvesson & Kärreman 2011), in particular the idea that organizational control is a practice

exercised primarily by managers and executives. We understand problematization as an effort to

reconsider assumptions, ideas and conceptualizations of a particular subject matter. It is thus

something different than puzzle-solving work (Morgan 1980). Problematization first and

foremost involves systematic questioning of some aspects of the received wisdom in the sense of

dominant research perspectives and theories (but also of the subject matter itself), while at the

same time offering a “positive” or constructive formulation of interesting research questions. The

way we define problematization here then also differs from critique or deconstruction or

reflexivity although these may be major elements in (resources for) the process.

Our approach can be characterized as explorative, in the sense that fieldwork was carried out in

an open-ended fashion and with a local/emergent research orientation (Deetz 1996). Deetz

contrasts elite/a priori and situated/emergent research perspectives. The former position means

that the researcher starts with a set of concepts a priori and applies them to whatever field he or

she deems suitable for the purpose of testing the theory at hand. The point of the research design

is to make data say “yes” or “no” to the theory. The situated/emergent position means providing

“a participatory ethnographic rearticulation of the multiple voices of a native culture” (Deetz

1996:592). In this case, the researcher aims towards hermeneutical translation and clarification of

the life-world of the particular group of people under study. This ideal may be reframed as the

postponement of closure in the research process as well as the written text.

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Here, of course, it is important to avoid the naive idea of being “non-theoretical” or blank as a

means to be open, as implied by some views of grounded theory (e.g. Glaser & Strauss, 1967;

Eisenhardt, 1989). This simply means that cultural taken-for-granted assumptions and other

implicit theories take precedence. Openness, the consideration of alternative routes of

interpretation and analysis are better accomplished through familiarity with an extensive

repertoire of theories and vocabularies used reflexively (Rorty, 1989).

In this sense, our approach is not inductivist. Rather, we have used abduction (Peirce 1978) as

the primary inference mechanism to guide our analysis. Abduction typically consists of three

steps:

1) the application of an established interpretive rule (theory)

2) the observation of a surprising empirical phenomenon

3) the re-imagination of the interpretive rule (theory) that resolves the surprise.

Thus, the hands-on efforts to explore the engineers’ work were partly planned, but many

initiatives were taken ad hoc as opportunities arose during the fieldwork. As a result, the analysis

emerged interactively in dialogue with the empirical material (see Blumer, 1969; Schwandt, 2000;

Alvesson and Kärreman, 2007). The most clearly planned effort was to study their weekly work

meetings. During the introductory phase of research it become clear to the first author that the

engineers worked in projects that were responsible for developing different parts of GlobalTech’s

products. GlobalTech is a large organization and it was impossible to follow all projects, so three

project-groups already familiar to the first author where chosen. The attention was directed

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towards their weekly work meetings, because they make up a situation where managerial meets

operative practice. The meetings are situations where project managers are expected to follow up

the goals of the projects, but also where the engineers discuss the ongoing work with each other

and their managers. In concrete terms, the design for studying the work meetings looked as

follows:

1. Interview the project manager of the group to get a grasp of what they are

currently working on and what the formal intention behind holding the work meeting is.

2. Observe 5-6 consecutive work meetings to get an idea of their dynamics.

3. Interview all the participants of the project (8-10 people in each project) in order

to get their view of the work meetings, what they think about situations when they get

instructions of different kinds, when deadlines are discussed, how they perceive their own

role and their manager’s role, but also how they conceive of the way they are working, of

top-management and of their organization. Also interview the project manager again to

discuss the observations from the meetings.

As noted, the first author also shadowed an engineer for a full workweek. In concrete terms,

shadowing meant following an engineer, Jake, in all his activities: sitting in his office when he sat

there, sitting in the laboratory when he did, standing in his colleague’s office listening when Jake

stood there talking, sitting in meetings listening when he was there participating, going for lunch

when Jake did, and so on. Shadowing is a way to get a closer and more coherent view of the

operative work by moving with the person who does it (Czarniawska, 2007), and it is a good way

of pursuing the ethnographic aims of empirical openness and proximity. Another and more

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specific purpose of the shadowing was to get a more profound understanding of activities that

were referred to at work meetings. The shadowing helped putting flesh on activities that

previously were only known by their names. (For example, to understand what it means to “make

measurements”).

One general observation after some time in the field was that their work was rather loosely

coupled with the instructions that came “from above.” It became clear that it was difficult for

project managers to influence the pace of the engineers’ work, and that the engineers seemed to

know what to do and very seldom asked for instructions from their manager. This impression

was strengthened by interview statements, such as this first line manager who claimed that “there

is nobody who tells us what to do.”

These emergent designs (general observation and shadowing Jake) in combination with the more

planned and structured design (study of the work meetings) provided support for existing

findings, and gave rise to some new ones. Specifically, there was support for the observation that

the engineers to a large extent “controlled themselves,” horizontally. But there was also an

emerging understanding of how the horizontal control often and in various ways circumnavigated

the managerial control forms. As a last step in the analytical process – much in line with how

Charmaz (2006: 127) recommends the use of theoretical conceptualization – we constructed

from the data the theoretical concepts of peer reviewing, translation and constructive

disobedience as a way of representing our findings in more abstract terms. Concepts are central

to theory development. They are “knowledge of the world” in abstract terms, intended to say

something of relevance about the case at hand, but also of relevance about the world outside of

the case (Becker, 1998: 128). We shall expand more on these concepts below and in the

20

discussion.

Analysis: operative control at GlobalTech – circumnavigating vertical

control

In the following empirical section we present three episodes that illustrate the practice of

horizontal control as it appears in relationship with the more formally organized vertical control

of the work. All the episodes point in the same direction, towards the argument that vertical

control is in place but is circumnavigated by the engineers as they engage in control work that can

be described as a sequence of 1) constructive disobedience of the formal system, 2) translation of

the formal system into workable problems, and 3) peer reviewing, i.e. scrutiny and feedback

between colleagues on the same hierarchical level. The vertical form of control is different in the

episodes, however. In the first episode, vertical control appears as follow-up attempts form the

project leader, in the second as deadlines set up by top-management, and in the third, it appears

as a quality assessment system. Finally, the practice of peer review is further scrutinized.

Episode one: Follow-up at work meetings – the horizontal takes over from the vertical

As has been noted, managers at GlobalTech argued that operative work is controlled mainly by

follow-up practices, making sure that people finish on time. This follow-up took place most

commonly and clearly at the weekly work meetings, which was thus one site where the vertical

practice encountered the horizontal and operative one. The purpose of the meetings was to

communicate the overall goals of the to the operative core. There was a time plan that needed to

be followed, there were objectives to be met, and there was an apparent element of evaluation

from the part of the project manager who was expected to find out if the engineers were on time,

and if not, exert influence to make sure that they are.

21

At a typical work meeting, the project manager began by informing of decisions that had been

made at higher levels. Then he (there were no women in the group) started the follow up, which

was sometimes a rather mechanical activity where he mentioned the names of the engineers and

the processes they worked on, whereby the engineers gave a report that tended to be very brief

and technical. However, there were often problems of some kind, which is when the element of

control is accentuated. In these cases the complexity of the encounter between the vertical-

managerial and the horizontal-operative was played out, as in the following example.

Christian (project leader) asks Isac (engineer) how much time it would take to

design a more advanced version of a component called “VCO.” “Well, that

depends how different it is,” says Isac, mumbling. Christian asks if he can estimate:

“I mean if you take a guess?” “Well ... a month,” Isac replies. “Is it gonna get

bigger, or ...?” Christian asks. Isac says that it will get bigger. Christian then asks

cautiously: “How much is it size-wise ... you don’t know ... yet…?” “No idea” says

Isac. Marcus (engineer) chimes in with a joke, “Don’t you know that?” he says,

sarcastically pointing out the difficulty of knowing such a thing. Christian tries to

get an approximate answer, asking if they are talking 50 % bigger or more, but Isac

says that he doesn’t “have the slightest clue.” “No …” says Christian, a bit

resigned.

The observation shows that the encounter between the managerial and the operative practice was

far from straightforward. Instead, when trying to follow up the engineers’ work, Christian

encountered quite much resistance as the engineers emphasized the uncertainty of the work

process. When he tried to find out how long Isac’s work would take he answered vaguely that “it

22

depends,” and at other meetings he received responses such as “I hope I’ll finish” and “[I may

finish] with a bit of luck.” Christian’s attempts to align the work process with the time plan were

thus frequently circumnavigated by the engineers, who stressed the uncertain nature of their

work, and even joked about the fact that Christian wanted exact information about time.

This distortion of the vertical control process calls for the investigation of other control

dynamics, and one thing that commonly happened in this work group was that the engineers

turned to colleagues instead of the project manager to discuss what to do, how to do it, and when

it could be finished, as in the excerpt below.

Christian follows up Isac’s work. Isac says he is “not done.” Christian asks about

his status and receives a very technical report. After a short discussion in which

Alex (experienced engineer) is also involved Christian asks: “When do you think

...?” Isac replies a bit evasively, looking at Alex: “Well, I mean ... I can do it on the

blocks we have today, but now we added some extra stuff so ...” Christian is about

to say something when Alex chimes in: “I guess it’s rather little, at least it’s still the

same interface.” Isac asks Alex a question about the power. Alex explains. Then

Isac says: “Well, sure, I guess I’ll have to add those things.” Christian then asks

again when this will happen. “Next week in that case” says Isac. Alex chimes in

again, suggesting a way of taking care of the issue so that Isac will be able to send

off the document on Monday morning. Isac seems to think that sounds ok: “I’ll try

to do it tomorrow then” he says. “Good” says Alex.

This observation thus shows that the engineers tend to disobey the vertical order and, instead of

following the project leader, ascribe authority to knowledgeable colleagues and turn to them

23

instead for guidance. Together, they then engage in “translation” of the vertical order into

technical problems and a discussion between peers. Thus, the vertical order is neutralized in

favor of a horizontal one where colleagues discuss and scrutinize each other’s work to come up

with improvements and solutions.

Christian, the project leader, seems to be aware of this dynamic between the vertical and the

horizontal, as he, in an interview, says that “there are other people who understand better than I

what to do.” Isac, one of the engineers at the work meeting similarly communicates this

understanding:

The most effective way [of leading] is to gain enough authority among the ones

you’re supposed to lead by having deep enough technical knowledge and

experience. You know ... when he [Alex] says something, then there is a reason for

it, he knows what he’s talking about.

In other words, the vertical order, which is based on knowledge of the managerial practice, is

undermined as controller of the operative work, in favor of what we label “peer reviewing”,

which is a horizontal order based on knowledge of the operative practice.

Episode two: Disobeying and translating deadlines

The second episode illustrates the functioning and treatment of deadlines at GlobalTech. In line

with follow-ups, deadlines are a part of the vertical practice that controls through the

formulation, breaking down, and follow-up of goals. Deadlines indicate when something specific

should be completed. This study shows, however, that although deadlines told the engineers

24

when something should be completed, and although they were big goals broken down to small

goals, their effect as a managerial instrument to control the content of the engineers’ work was

limited. Put bluntly, the deadlines tended to control time but not content, and they often

provided more nuisance than guidance. Guidance and content control was instead accomplished

in processes of peer reviewing, where the engineers and their immediate managers needed to

manage the deadlines in order to make things work. As a result, deadlines were just as much

something that needed to be controlled through work, as something that was controlling the

work.

At GlobalTech, the objectives created by top management, formulated in time plans, thus did not

function as instruction manuals for the engineers, telling them how to go about in order to

produce a functioning product. Instead, the objectives were vague and the engineers often found

the requirements in the time plans unrealistic. As one engineer pointed out regarding the

deadlines, “it seems like the leaders just won’t listen when someone comes up with a realistic time

plan.” Carl, a first level project leader, also expressed this, saying that “some things that they want

us to do require a totally different time plan [than this] you know.”

The unrealistic character of the time plans was also expressed at the work-meetings, such as the

one presented below. We enter the meeting, which was held on a Tuesday, as the engineers are

talking about a deadline on Friday the same week, and Carl, the project leader, explains the

situation to the group:

Ok, we are talking a lot about RF5 [a version of a prototype], and everything

should be finished this week. Actually, it’s a very tough job to do all that we should

25

do this week, but I have tried to ... I made a plan for RF5. I will just briefly go

through this and I think the status you have presented now ... [the engineers have

just presented their work status, i.e. how far they have proceeded in their respective

areas of responsibility] well ... it doesn’t fit too well into this really tight schedule

[Carl laughs a bit]. If we focus on PCB-related changes, then I think we can do it ...

I’m sure we can do it. So actually, according to the present plan, we must have

some kind of a small design review already tomorrow [some laughter]. That’s

tough [smiling, and then laughter from everybody]. It’s really tough [some people

are whispering]. But this gives you feedback ... It must fit into some deliveries in

the end.

What Carl is saying here is that it is basically impossible to fulfill the requirements. “It’s a very

tough job to do all that we should do,” he says, but he has made a plan, thus pointing out that they

will fix it somehow. Their laughter indicates that they found the requirements unrealistic, perhaps

ridiculous even. For an outside observer, they may seem face an impossible situation: they cannot

do everything that they should do until the deadline on Friday, but they are still going to keep the

deadline on Friday.

The resolution to this “mystery” lies in the way that the deadlines were perceived: as a point in

time when something needs to be completed, but not so much as a description of what shall be

delivered. As Carl noted, “... it’s better to deliver something than nothing,” and “if it’s a real

deadline, then we modify its content in order to keep it […] that’s often the only way.”

26

The relevance of the dynamics presented above was also communicated in interviews. For

example, in an interview with Lars, an experienced engineer with a background as project leader,

the first author confronted him with the work meeting presented above, whereby he gave his

view of what this was all about:

When people laugh a bit at it like that, it can be either ... sometimes you make sure

that you finish it on time, as good as you can. I mean ... a deadline, it’s something

that is to be done, and it is to be done before that deadline. And they are often very

sacred; you can’t move those deadlines. And if you can’t move the point in time,

then you can change what’s to be done. So you give it your best shot and redefine

the content in order to keep the deadline. And this is often a very informal process,

you do what you manage to do or ... people can sort of make decisions under the

table regarding what they find appropriate to do, or you so to speak interpret it as

constructively as possible and do what you think should be done, although it’s not

really what you said you would do.

Researcher: So you change the content a little sometimes ...

Yeeeah, not all that little. Quite much. Just in order to keep that deadline.

Keeping deadlines thus seemed to be a matter of a quite autonomous interpretation of the

situation, where priorities were made on an ad hoc basis at the work meetings as well as in

everyday interaction among the engineers. The data thus illustrates that a deadline is not just

something that needs to be kept. It is also something that needs to be managed. In terms of our

conceptual apparatus, it needs to be disobeyed and translated into the horizontal dimension so that it

makes sense in the engineers’ practice of technical problem solving. Once translated, the work

can be exposed to peer reviewing.

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Episode three: Quality control – A formal ritual taken over by peer reviewing

The formal quality control is a third example of a formally vertical control practice that tends to

be turned into a horizontal one. At GlobalTech, they had a quality control system called

“Guido,” which is a database to which errors were to be reported and through which changes

were to be managed. For example, a project specification stated: “All error-reports inside [the

project] shall be reported in the Guido. It is the responsibility of all project members to act on

assigned error-reports.”

In brief, Guido was intended to function as follows: If somebody finds an error or a problem,

s/he is expected to, via the database, write a “change request” (CR) to the “change control

board” (CCB), whose members are managers and experts in various fields. The CCB will then

analyze and approve or disapprove the CR. If the CR is approved, it will be forwarded to the

engineer who wrote it via Guido. The engineer will work on the change and then report it back

to Guido. The change is analyzed by the CCB, and if approved, it can be formally documented in

Guido that a change has been made.

Following the description made above, the management of changes seemed to follow a formal

and vertical movement where the CCB takes on the role of an “expert board.” In practice,

however, the dynamic looked different. Often, the route via the CCB was more of a ritual than

an actual check. Jake, one of the engineers in the radio-group, provided insight into when he, in

an interview, clarified to the first author what happened when he found out that circuit did not

28

fulfill the requirements and things needed to be changed.

Well, the [circuit] did not fulfill the specified requirements and what you can do

then is to change either the circuit or the specification, and this time the ASIC-

people [the people who design the circuit] asked if we could change the

specification instead of the circuit because that’s a smoother solution. So what I

did was an investigation to see if we could loosen up the specification in terms of

the systems aspect, which I am good at. And I saw that we could. So I told them

that they could change their specification, but I did that by saying that they have to

make a change request on the specification.

Researcher: To the CCB?

Jake: Yes, to the CCB. And that’s where Thor [a project leader] enters the picture.

Because he’s the one who makes the approval in the CCB. And after he has

approved the request, which I asked the ASIC-people to write, then we can update

the specification. [...] And then everything will look fine.

Researcher: So you ask ASIC to make a change request, and then it’s approved.

Jake: Ehrm, it’s not approved until I say, “we can approve this.”

Researcher: Ok, so you’re supposed to say that it can be approved.

Jake: Yes.

Researcher: But what about Thor?

Jake: He’s not ... he’s just a formal ... button.

Researcher: Yeah. So he’s just supposed to sign?

Jake: Yes. I say, “write approved”, to him.

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Researcher: There seems to be quite much of this “sign here”-thing.

Jake: Yes [laugh]. Oh yes. Sometimes they don’t even sign. There’s a lot of ... that

they don’t even get in contact with the document. I think they get some sort of

mail where they can check what they have approved [laughs].

What happened in the example above was thus that Jake discussed the issue with some people at

the ASIC-department, who asked if it would be possible to change the specification and still

fulfill the general requirements. Jake investigated the issue and found that it would be possible.

Instead of just changing his own and the ASIC-group’s specification, however, Jake – in line with

the Guido-requirements – asked the ASIC-group to write a change request (CR) to the change

control board (CCB) so that the board could approve the change. The board gave its approval, an

approval that was formally given by Thor, but in practice it was given by Jake who told Thor to

sign the document, to “write approved.” According to Jake, as we see in the quote, this sort of

dynamic between the vertical and the horizontal is quite common.

Another example of how the formal use of Guido has to make place for a more horizontal way

of working comes from the shadowing of Jake. He worked on an issue where he “got a Guido”

that indicated the need for updating some measurements. The formal way of working here would

be for the CCB to analyze the changes and either approves or disapprove them. Instead of

waiting for a decision from the CCB to get approval, however, Jake caught Thor, who was a

member of the CCB, when he walked by in the lab to get approval right away. The reason for

this, said Jake, was that there was no time to wait for the next CCB-meeting.

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Thus, Guido was another example of an attempt to vertically control the work process. The

effect of the attempt was ambiguous in terms of vertical control, however, as it seemed to be

rather loosely coupled (Weick, 1976) to the practical work. There was something ritualistic about

the communication with the CCB. The very existence of a CCB may give the impression that the

formal vertical system is necessary for qualitative engineering work to take place, but its actual

impact on the work appeared to be limited. Instead of flowing from the CCB to the engineers,

the engineers seemed to manage the CCB. In our terms, they disobeyed the rules of the system in

a way that was constructive in terms of solving the technical problems at hand. As a result of this

constructive disobedience, the control over what to do then took place primarily between the

engineers in a peer review process where Jake and the “ASIC-people” negotiated how the

problem could be solved by making changes in the systems requirements.

Last: Peer reviewing permeates work behind the formal façade

We thus want to show how the vertical control system was systematically circumnavigated as the

engineers constructively disobeyed the rules of the systems or the people representing it,

translated the content of the system into technical problems, and then engaged in a horizontal

process of control that we call peer reviewing. Peer reviewing permeated much of the work at

GlobalTech beyond the formalized work meetings, deadlines, or quality control systems. In

addition to what has been presented in the episodes, the fieldwork showed that the engineers

organized meetings where they scrutinized and gave feedback on each other’s work. The

participants at the meetings were rarely there to supervise, but they were people who were

knowledgeable enough to give “valuable feedback,” as one engineer put it, or who will be

affected by the result of the work. Such people were typically not managers but other engineers,

or “peers.” Peer reviewing also characterized the many ad hoc meetings held by the engineers.

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Typically, the engineers who were working on a problem – it could, for example, be the

introduction of a new component to minimize power consumption – met to discuss and find out

a solution. In the process, they gave each other feedback, and they decided what to do and how

to do it. For example, at one such meeting, observed by the first author, three engineers – Lars,

Jake and Andy – worked on a future version of their product. They decided that Jake and Lars

would work out possible solutions until the following day, when they would have a new meeting.

Jake worked in the afternoon on his solutions, often walking over to Andy to ask for advice. On

the following day, they met again and Jake and Lars presented their solutions. They had intense

discussions for about an hour, when Andy got an idea, which he presented and, after about

another hour of discussion, the other engineers decided that his idea was the best one, and he

would be responsible for developing it more properly.

When the engineers left the meeting, the first author asked Jake who was the manager at the

meeting, whereby he responded, “Yeah, I’d wonder that too,” and smiled. There was no project

manager, according to Jake. This work by the engineers then turned out to make up the ground

for a new solution that was less power consuming and smaller than the previous one. The

observation that work was very much controlled in horizontal relationships at the bottom of the

hierarchy was also articulated in interview statements. Lars, for example, said:

That we’re working on things like this from below, that’s definitely common,

because there’s no leadership from above regarding issues like this. So all initiatives

must come from below, yes. Management takes no initiatives, no. You can easily

count on that.

Thus, we are presenting this final empirical section to show that – in contrast to the formal

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project meetings, deadlines, and quality control systems where the vertical was always present as

an “other” with which the horizontal interacted – there was much work done with little

intervention from formal vertical control systems at all. Instead, horizontal control in the shape

of peer reviewing dominated.

Discussion: control work as a dispersed practice

The episodes show how control work is not only a vertical undertaking, but also inherent in the

horizontal operative practice. In light of this insight, the study suggests that control work is a

“dispersed” practice (Schatzki, 1996) that engages many different organizational actors, including

the engineers as they do their work. Viewing control as a dispersed practice is quite different to

most approaches to control. The classical notions of simple, technological, and bureaucratic

control (Edwards, 1979) all rest on the assumption that control is a managerial practice external

to the operative work. The same thing can be said about the concepts of normative control

(Kunda, 1992) and identity regulation (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002); they are understood as

managerial activities. Even the concept of “mutual adjustment” (Mintzberg, 1979) is constructed

as a managerial practice of control. Although the actual “adjustment” is supposed to happen

horizontally in the operative work, it is thought of as the result of managerial design of an

organization that promotes “adjustment.” Thus, according to this view, the adjustment as such is

not seen as containing any element of control.

Barker’s (1993) concept of “concertive control” offers a different take. It indeed centers on the

control effects of horizontal interactions. But, as noted earlier, while concertive control fruitfully

conceptualizes how norms of behavior are created not by managers but among team members, it

does not explain how control is exerted at the point of execution of operative work. Also, the

emphasis on control as a dispersed practice and the subsequent discussion of the interplay

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between the vertical and the horizontal is left out.

Constructive disobedience, translation and peer reviewing as practices of horizontal control

Control may be dispersed but that does not mean that different control practices cannot be

aligned. Control work at GT is certainly multifaceted but also executed according to a particular

sequence. As we have seen in the episodes, operative control work typically happened in light of

vertical control practices, from which the horizontal practice took over. For this “takeover” to

happen, a link between the vertical and the horizontal needs to be constructed. In other terms,

the vertical needs to be “horizontalized,” which is an example of control work.

We suggest that the construction of the link to vertical forms of control can be understood in

sequential terms through the concepts of constructive disobedience, translation and peer reviewing.

Constructive disobedience happens when the engineers are confronted with vertical control

systems and basically think, “no way, we’re not doing that.” Constructive disobedience is

disobedient in the sense that the rules of the formal system are broken, but constructive in the

sense that the result of breaking the rules is that work, arguably, gets done more efficiently. The

concept can be understood as a contrast to “malicious compliance,” that is, following rules and

thus knowingly, and therefore maliciously (from the managerial point of view), allowing for

inefficiencies. Constructive disobedience is like a game of “making out” (Burawoy, 1979) that is

done in good faith. Making out is about manipulating a system (of rewards) for one’s own

personal gain, whereas constructive disobedience is about “fixing” a non-functional system in

order to enable the production of functional products. The episodes exhibit how the hierarchy

was “disobeyed” in the follow up and the quality control (episodes one and three), and how the

34

content of the deadlines was manipulated (episode two).

Being constructively disobedient is a knowledge-intensive activity. Basically, unless you are an

obstinate child that just refuses to cooperate, disobedience triggers translation, which requires the

use of knowledge to convert vertical control into technical problems that can be solved. As

indicated by the data, the engineers often perceived vertical control as “unrealistic.” This was

dealt with by translating the unrealistic deadlines, which made little sense to the engineers, into

sensible technical problems that could be solved in the operative work. Thus, translation is the

second element in the sequence of control work at play here.

It is of note that translation changes its object (e.g. Latour, 2005). As a result, both the meaning

of the message and the mode of control take on a new shape through the translation. The

message changes from a check or an order to a technical problem, and the control changes not

only from the vertical to the horizontal mode, but also from a monitoring and constraining mode

to a more productive and enabling mode of horizontal control. This was illustrated well in both

episode one and two, where follow-up attempts (episode one) and deadlines (episode two)

appeared to be unrealistic and non-sensical at first, but after having been translated they made

new sense and operative action was enabled.

The final sequence is the execution of horizontal control. We suggest “peer reviewing” as a way

to conceptualize horizontal control as an operative practice. The data illustrates that the control

largely took place among peers. Peers, as understood here, are people who belong to the same

“community of practice” (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Lave and Wenger, 1991). A central aspect of

35

communities of practice is that they consist of members who share knowledge of a specific

(integrative) practice. In our study, this is exemplified by engineers who shared knowledge of the

technical problems to be solved, engineers who were knowledgeable enough to make insightful

comments about the operative work.

The controlling mechanism of peer reviewing differs from the traditional cybernetic form that

monitors, identifies, and corrects deviances from a rule or norm. Rather than monitoring, control

in peer reviewing resembles editing, which is a more productive form of control that enables the

use of knowledge to solve problems. Editing signifies control as an alignment of the work in

progress as a result of convincing and insightful comments, corrections or criticisms. These are

arguably control dynamics that characterized the operative work in at GlobalTech. In light of the

above, peer reviewing can be defined as controlling that takes place at an operative and local level when one

or more members of a knowledge community edit – i.e. scrutinize, evaluate, discuss and suggest alterations – the

work of another member or other members. In this sense, peer reviewing is exercising control while

doing work.

Peer reviewing: unobtrusive control by doing work

Since doing work and controlling are intertwined in the practice of peer reviewing, control work

and other types of work may phenomenologically be the same. In other terms, control work in

the shape of peer reviewing does not have to be perceived as control, but as “just” work, which is

why it is often perceived as unobtrusive. At GlobalTech, having meetings to scrutinize each other’s

work is described by the engineers as a “good way of working” that is about “having several eyes

directed towards the problems in order to cover up for the possibility that you miss something.”

36

In a similar vein, the peer review is not seen as disruptive or disquieting, which is often the case

with vertical control, but rather as constructive and productive: “New things are added” in the review,

as one engineer said. In a sense, peer reviewing does not seem to be perceived as control at all,

but as “support” or even “help.” Indeed, the engineers talked much about the importance of

helping and of helping as a “cultural thing.”

Horizontal control does not necessarily have to be unobtrusive, especially not when it is

perceived as directed towards one’s person. But taking the context presented here into

consideration, the unobtrusiveness is understandable. The direct target of peer reviewing is work

and not the individual person. This is different to the horizontal control put forth by studies

where employees are expected to evaluate each other based on their qualities as employees, such

as their adherence to team- or company norms and rules (e.g. Barker, 1993; McKinley and Taylor,

1996). Colleagues who are expected to evaluate each other based on their qualities as employees

may indeed find this awkward and obtrusive and invent ways of resisting requirements to

perform such tasks (McKinley and Taylor, 1996). But peer reviewing is integrated in and directed

towards work. It is perceived as a “good way of working” and not a way of control, and it does

not clash with what the engineers have learned to do at work: solve technical problems.

Unobtrusiveness can make control very effective (Sewell, 1998). One reason for this is that the

employees are unlikely to engage in critical reflection directed towards a control system that is

perceived as a good way of working, as a constructive practice. As Barker (1999) who studied

normative control in teams noted: “To cultivate means for critiquing these powerful and

unobtrusive processes, the team must deliberately set aside time to review how they are

controlling themselves” (p. 180). Such reflection is not a part of peer reviewing. Instead, its

smooth integration in the production process, its alignment with the engineering practice of

technical problem solving, and the fact that it is preceded by disobedience and translation and

37

thereby decoupled from managerial practice gives it the appearance of “non-control.” But it has

controlling effects in that it makes work move forward by guiding the behavior of the members

that are reviewed.

Peer reviewing can thus be said to contain a combinatorial feature: a direct work focus combined

with normative overtones. The work focus means that peer reviewing has direct effects on work

behavior. This is different from normative control or identity regulation (Kunda 1992, Alvesson

& Willmott 2002), which rely on indirect effects: that is, changed norms or identifications are

thought to cause changes in work behavior. To understand the normative overtones of peer

reviewing, we need to keep in mind that it takes place in a community of practice, which is an

important site for identity building (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Orr, 1996). In other terms, when we

engage in work practice, we also gain a sense of who we are. Following this practice-based line of

reasoning – which is quite different from managerially instilled normative control through culture

management or identity regulation – peer reviewing is simultaneously a practice where technical

problems are solved and where an identity of being a technical problem solver is (re)produced.

Peer reviewing thus controls work directly, but it also reproduces what is perceived as normal for

an engineer to do and what it means to be an engineer. This combination of directly targeting

work and indirectly (re)producing an engineering identity that includes viewing peer reviewing as

unobtrusive, as “not-control,” may make peer reviewing a particularly powerful form of control.

In light of the above, it makes sense to understand peer reviewing as a kind of professional

control: it is connected to complex work, non-routine problem solving, and takes place in a

community of practice where esoteric knowledge is shared by the practitioners, and the work is

largely controlled by the employees themselves. Indeed, in contrast to indirect professional

control with focus on institutional arrangements that give rise to professional norms (e.g. Abbott,

1991), peer reviewing can be seen as a direct method of professional control that takes place

38

through social interaction between peers in everyday settings, as work gets done.

The practice of peer reviewing may also suggest an explanation of how professionalism is

maintained. As noted, professionalism can be referred to as “the institutional circumstances in

which the members of occupations rather than consumers or managers control work” (Freidson,

2001: 12). Professional work is thus thought of as “protected” from management control and

customer influences by the institutional circumstances (such as professional associations and

norms, formal education etc.) surrounding the profession. A functioning practice of peer

reviewing is likely to construct a similar protection, but on a local and operative rather than institutional

level. Under the shield of a community of practice, the professionals are likely to remain in control

of their knowledge, out of reach of knowledge-management attempts of making their tacit

knowledge explicit (Alvesson and Kärreman 2001, Sewell, 2005), or various attempts of

commodification (Braverman, 1974; Cooley, 1980) that may threaten their professionalism. The

notion of peer reviewing may thus be relevant for the study of both how professionals control

each other on a local level, and for understanding how this control enables them to maintain their

status as professionals.

Conclusion

Complex work means complex control. This study highlights that much of the management of

complex/knowledge intensive work takes place in communities that do not exist on

organizational charts, and is exerted by those who are not formally thought of as managers. It

points at the limits of the means of control used by formal management and indicates that it is

not so much hierarchy or traditional project management tools that make up the main method of

control but rather the flexible involvement of colleagues in feedback, scrutiny, and quality

assessments. As a result, we may ask ourselves, as scholars of organization, how much we know

39

about how the operative work in organizations is controlled. If the impact of formal management

practice is limited, and our knowledge comes from studies of this very practice, how relevant is

that knowledge? The point of this paper is not to deny the relevance of formal management –

neither in the shape of rules and standards (e.g. Mintzberg, 1979) nor in the shape of culture

control and identity regulation (e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 2002) – but to tone it down and

boost the idea that control is a dispersed practice, exercised also in non-managerial work.

As a way of broadening the interpretive repertoire of control, the concepts of peer reviewing,

translation and constructive disobedience have been introduced as a framework for

understanding a) control work as a concept, b) control as a horizontal practice and c) how

horizontal control is related to vertical control. Although this study was conducted in a quite

special environment, where technical knowledge plays an important role, there is reason to

suggest that the dynamics presented here are relevant also for other types of work. When work

gets complex and based on workers’ discretion, the need for being constructively disobedient,

translate, and engage in peer reviewing arguably increases. One may, for example, expect similar

dynamics in other types of “traditional” knowledge work. Consider also the resemblance to the

work of public servants who, receiving new directives “from above” as governments change,

need to “disobey” parts of the directives because they are impossible to implement, translate

them into something that works in their operative environment, and then apply them in

interaction with their peers. Arguably, the data presented in this paper may represent a quite

typical dynamic of contemporary work, where employees need to disobey, translate and

reinterpret managerial practices, as they struggle to execute their own, operative, practice.

40

It is of note that constructive disobedience, translation and peer reviewing should not to be seen

as “resistance” to managerial control. Resistance is about friction, and, reasonably, therefore

slows things down. The conceptual framework developed here around the practice of peer

reviewing offers an alternative way of understanding the control work of the engineers – it

doesn’t slow down, but changes the direction of work. Instead of being a practice of resistance in

the control-resistance dichotomy, constructive disobedience, translation and peer reviewing are

practices that enable horizontal control in a struggle (Fleming and Spicer, 2008) in which

influence over work is negotiated with the vertical dimension of control. On the one hand, the

practices here indicate that the engineers have resisted commodification and still have control

over their own work. On the other hand, their way of being “constructive” makes little overt

resistance to the idea that managers manage and thus does not disrupt the formal hierarchy.

In the grander scheme of things, peer reviewing contributes to the understanding of how it can

be that organizations seem to be efficiently controlled despite the limited efficiency of traditional

means of control, and despite the fact that much of the power over core operations has moved

from formal managers to employees in complex organizations. When the traditional means fail

we can deduce that there needs to be “something else” that offers guidance. The dominant

response to this has been that managerially instilled culture (e.g. Kunda, 1992) or identification

(e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 2002) guide the actions of employees. Constructive disobedience,

translation and peer reviewing make up an alternative set of concepts that represent the dynamics

of work that, so far, has largely resisted the “deskilling” that Braverman (1974) and others

predicted. They offer a complement that “de-fetishizes” the role of formal management,

emphasizing not how managerially produced norms, values and identities drive action, but how

expert knowledge and local interactions play a central role when it comes to deciding what to do

41

and how to do it in knowledge intensive work.

42

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