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The recent spate of corporate scandals has raised a debate about the amount of control executives have over their firms, which parallels a similar debate about managerial control between agency theory and organization theory. Proponents of corporate governance reform (and agency theory) argue that executives have too much control over the firms that they manage and are in a position to abuse it, while the executives themselves (and many organization theorists) claim that managers can never be in complete control over their entire web of interdependencies. In this paper, I examine managerial control by studying how managers altered their patterns of communication with the investing public during the height of the Enron accounting scandal. I draw from research on the strategic use of attributions and develop competing hypotheses based on the mechanisms of agency theory, resource dependence theory, and social distance. I test these hypotheses by analyzing press releases of quarterly earnings statements from 2001 and 2002 for a sample of firms from the S&P 500 and find results more consistent with resource dependence theory as greater institutional ownership leads managers to take more credit for success but that less managerial ownership and fewer outside directors have no effect. Further analysis shows that having Arthur Andersen as one's auditor was the strongest predictor of attribution change. I conclude with a discussion on the importance of the "court of public opinion" as well as the importance of conducting mechanism-based research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents organization and management theory conference paper abstracts. "Factors That Impact Sales Person's Performance in Virtual Environments" aims to understand the effects of sales persons' location on their sales quota achievement. "Can Progress Be Resistant to Bad Institutions? The Case of ICT" shows that cross-country differences in the use of information and communication technologies are to a considerable extent due to differences in the investment climate. "Chance, Choice, & Inevitability in Strategy," discusses strategic choice.

This section presents abstracts of papers related to business policy and strategy, including "Competition, Learning, or Legitimacy: Understanding the Adoption of Websites by Consumer Magazines," about corporate earnings restatements; "A Road to Directorship: How Corporate Executives Secure Positions on Other Firm's Boards," about the role of outside directors; and "A Selection that Cannot Stand the Test: Succession Context and New CEO Dismissal," about executive succession.

In this paper we report results from an analysis of semi-structured interviews with consultants and clients of consultants. Both groups of interviewees were asked to refer to a recent consultancy project in their responses (last incident approach). The study is based on psychological control theory. A basic hypothesis that is derived from this theory is that consultants, especially by creating management fashions and by identifying new types of organizational problems, increase managers' uncertainty but, simultaneously, also provide services for the reestablishment of managerial control. Consultants achieve a reestablishment of control by furnishing managers with useful information on their organization's processes and performance and with management tools (direct control) but also by inducing the managers to cognitively reinterpret their organization's current situation. The study tends to support the assumption that consultants, simultaneously, decrease and increase perceived control of their clients in various direct and indirect ways and, thereby, create demand for their services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances knowledge of the manifestations of neoliberal governmentality in contemporary work and employment relations by examining the mechanisms of biopower and managerial control that generate-and produce consent to-precarious, non-standard employment relationships. Based on an ethnographic case study, the paper shows how a globally operating direct-sales organization, deploys particular technologies of government to program and reconfigure its employment relationships in a way that allows the organization to mobilize and manage its distributors as a network of 'enterprise-units': as a community of self- regulating individuals who willingly reconstitute themselves and their lives as 'enterprises' so as to pursue self-efficacy, autonomy, and self-worth as individuals. The paper contributes to the literature on organizational power, Foucauldian studies of the workplace in particular, by elaborating theory on the manifestations of neoliberal governmentality in organizational power relations in two main ways: First, we contribute to the literature on organizational power by the building a 'biopolitical', 'analytics of government' -perspective on human resources -related managerial control that shifts attention to the biopolitical mechanisms of governmentality and manaberial control that underpin the ongoing transformations in the sphere of work. Second, we contribute to Foucauldian studies of the workplace by extending the theory on the 'discourse of enterprise' and the 'enterprising self' to the domain non-standard employment relationships and precarious work to examine and empirically illustrate the biopolitical mechanisms of governmentality and management control that underpin the ongoing transformations in the sphere of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]