Management Controls and the Reproduction of Gender Inequality: A Review and Research Agenda

This paper presents a literature review exploring how management controls – key mechanisms in aligning employee behaviour with organisational objectives – are implicated in the (re)production of gender inequality in organisations. Based on an integrative review of interdisciplinary research and drawing on Acker’s theory of gendered organisations and the concept of inequality regimes, this study explores the multiple ways in which three major management control categories – performance evaluation, formal organisational structure, and socio-ideological control are enacted and prove central to the reproduction of gender inequality in organisations. Moreover, the paper examines how inequality is reinforced through two institutionalised organisational discourses: meritocracy and the ideal worker. This review shows that different control mechanisms do not work in isolation but reinforce each other, and that their gendered effects are cumulative throughout an individual’s career. This paper provides both a roadmap and research agenda for scholars and practitioners, offering guidance on designing and implementing more gender-inclusive control systems.