ABSTRACT
The previous chapter dealt with managerial conceptualisations of control within an international organisational context. It was argued that given the fact that in some emerging markets people’s allegiances fall firstly to their family (and in some cases their state) rather than their company, internationalising firms must ensure that they achieve managerial primacy in order to ensure conformity in both ‘owned’ and ‘contracted’ environments before they address issues such as generating behavioural commitment. With regards to expediting control through its crucial middle-management cadre of HMULs it was posited that companies concentrated on ensuring blueprint execution, ‘line of sight’ alignment through output prioritisation and, crucially, an uncompromising approach to values transmission and confessional security. These ‘sociological control’ approaches, however, are not in themselves sufficient to ensure effective performance of HMULs and their followers; a range of psychologically/intrinsically-based interventions are also required to generate commitment.
