Appropriation and usage of management control tools: An imperious reconsideration of the behavioral representations of actors in a public organization

Abstract

Nowadays, public organizations are in a state of perpetual change. They are part of the need to improve performance supported by the New Public Management (NPM) trend (El Oussa & Fasly, 2023). In this sense, adherence to this movement is materialized by the insertion of management control tools, which are straddled between the instrumental aspect based on a technicality in relation to specific ends (Martineau, 2014) and the behavioral aspect is the real responsible for the fate of these tools. This paper aims to understand how users use appropriate management control tools, by determining the factors behind their usage behaviors. For this purpose, we have applied an interpretivist epistemology by conducting an exploratory qualitative study in a Moroccan public institution, we carried out semi-structured interviews with 10 members of the audit and management control department. Our results show that there are several modes of usage (solid, fragile, rejection) differing from one actor to another. This divergence in behavior is due to institutional factors, factors linked to the tool’s attributes and socio-psychological factors linked to the user. Our results contribute to enriching the literature by deducing the different usages and modes of appropriation supported by the factors that promote or hinder the implementation of management control tools.