Differing perspectives of order and control: In a UK retail store's performance appraisal scheme.

The thesis is concerned with the differing perspectives of order and control within a retail store's performance appraisal scheme. The methodology used in the collection and presentation of the empirical information is based on the work of Berger and Luckmann (1966). The focus of the thesis is a case study, that highlights how order and control was created and maintained by the participants in the performance appraisal scheme. The case study details how the performance appraisal scheme was formulated as a solution to a "problem" of order and control, within the organisation. But, it is proposed that the issue was not order and control per se but the maintenance, influence and efficacy of managerial order and control in the face of alternative orders and controls. An alternative order and control emanated, mainly, from non-managerial participants in the performance appraisal scheme. In asserting the validity of their order and control, non-managerial participants gave a visibility to ideas of order and control that has been neglected in discussions of managerial control, particularly those based on a structural functionalist perspective. Both managerial and non-managerial ideas of order and control did interact with each other. The thesis concludes that it is in the creative interplay of differing perspectives of order and control, that a fuller understanding of management order and control may be had.