Management Control and Creativity

4Management Control in a Specific Environment, the Case of the Social and Solidarity Economy

Following Chapter 3, we realized that innovation management was an unfinished business. Organizations do not yet have the tools and best practices.

In this chapter, we explore other organizations where management control is in tension. We focus more specifically on the case of the social and solidarity economy (SSE), where management control is in tension on the one hand with the need to innovate and on the other hand with strong human and social values. Indeed, the social and solidarity economy organizations evolve in a rapidly changing environment. Funders favor innovative organizations that offer solutions at lower costs while guaranteeing the quality of the service provided. The SSE structures are therefore characterized by:

• the need to innovate to propose new solutions;
• the ambition to develop projects with human-centered solid values;
• the need to guarantee a financial balance to ensure the sustainability of the projects.

First of all, management control is in conflict with innovation. Indeed, control and creativity appear as opposites with objectives that seem contradictory. Then, management control is in tension with strong social and solidarity values. Indeed, these are the priority of the actors who may consider financial issues non-priority issues.

Our objective is to understand how SSE actors deal with these two levels of tension and what the inspirations are that can inspire ...