Instrumentation processes of management control tools: An attempt at categorization using the case of French public organizations[Les processus d’instrumentation des outils de contrôle de gestion : un essai de catégorisation à partir du cas des organisations publiques en France]

Management control tools are particularly emblematic of the managerial instrumentation of organizations. The outcomes of this instrumentation and its consequences for organizations and their members have been widely documented in the literature. By contrast, few studies describe in detail the various instrumentation processes that produce these outcomes and effects. To address this gap, we traced the instrumentation trajectory of three management control tools (a cost calculation system and two dashboards) in two French public organizations (a university and a hospital), both of which have undergone major changes to their control tools over the past twenty years. Both studies were based on the proposal of a novel model for observing and analyzing the instrumentation of control tools within these organizations, built around the three main stages of management instrumentation highlighted in the literature: adoption, appropriation, and re-appropriation. Applying this model to our research fields allows us to provide an initial overview of this instrumentation, identifying four main processes through which management control tools are implemented in organizations: two initiation processes (transposition and design) and two processes of further development (simplification and hybridization).