Controls and performance: assessing the mediating role of creativity and collegiality

This study examines the mediating role of two types of employee related behaviour, creativity and collegiality, in the association between the use of Snell’s (1992) three control types (i.e. input, behaviour, and output) with individual employee job performance and organisational performance. An online survey questionnaire was used to collect data, with 203 responses received from Australian lower-level managers. The findings reveal that while output controls influence both individual employee job performance and organisational performance directly, creativity and collegiality play significant roles in mediating the associations between input and behaviour controls with both individual employee job performance and organisational performance. Overall, the findings contribute to the MCS literature by providing an empirical insight into how the use of different types of controls can enhance specific aspects of performance, i.e. individual employee job performance, and organisational financial and non-financial performance, via employee related behaviour (creativity and collegiality). Such findings have important implications for practice.