Ideological Control in Public and Business Organizations

Control is the fundamental function of management, but companies due to the increasingly turbulent environment and public organizations because of purposes ambiguity have to seek mare flexible forms of control aimed at self-control. Thus, both sanctions and rewards associated with the control system must be less associated with factors that are external to the organizational mem ber and mare with interna! stimuli associated with the inner satisfaction and a sense of fulńllment. Such an option seems to offer ideological control. The paper is an analysis of ideology as an effective form of control in organizations. Therefore, the fundamental issues of the regarded ideology and control mechanisms related to it have been discussed. The direct appeal to ideology, as a fundamental element of normative control, offers the opportunity to exploit a large body of knowledge from sociology and political science in the service of organizations and management research. ldeological control as an organizational process consists of several stages. In the first stage, employees' individual ideologies relating to the organization are modińed or replaced by the ideology preferred by the organization. Replacement or modińcation of the ideology usually is rendered by showing the way of transformation from the current criticized reality to the desired vision of the future determined by the new ideology. lf members of the organization accept the criticism of the present reality and are attracted by the vision of the future determined by the ideology, they will act in accordance to this ideology. ldeology determines which actions are beneńcial to the organization, and which are harmful. Therefore, an organisational actor, whose actions are consistent with the ideology, would obtain rewards, and those whose actions are illegitimate would suffer from sanctions.