The management control package and its relation to job satisfaction : A CASE STUDY AT SANKT KORS FASTIGHETS AB

Abstract: Job satisfaction or dissatisfaction stems from the value alignment of a person's work-related needs and what the organization is offering. To increase job satisfaction can be seen as something worth pursuing in its own right, but it also has societal benefits in how it affects the health of employees. For organisations, job satisfaction is associated with lower levels of absenteeism and employee turnover, as well as better financial performance.   The relation between the management control package and its effect on job satisfaction has not been studied to any great extent. Most studies in the management field have focused on one management control system or management control practice at the time. Yet most practices and systems are working together as a package with different levels of dependencies. The thesis of the paper is to explore how configurations of the management control package can explain differences in job satisfaction between organizations, by comparing a highly successful organization in regard to job satisfaction to a more normal performing. To answer the question a case study was conducted with the company Sankt Kors Fastighets AB and their equally sized subsidiary Dukaten. Sankt Kors is an estate company that has had a very high level of job satisfaction in recent years, while Dukaten, which mainly manages parking lots and car parks, has had lower and more standards levels of job satisfaction. The cases companies’ management control (MC) package configurations were compared to Bedford & Malmi’s (2015) configurations, and then the configurations were compared to MC package characteristics that the literature review found should be associated with higher levels of job satisfaction. The characteristics were high autonomy, nonbureaucratic, high participation in decision making, emphasis on values, and knowledge sharing. The devolved MC package configuration that Sankt Kors has, is characterized by a flat organization structure, a governance structure where authority is decentralized, a high degree of horizontal communication in the origination, and autonomy in the work processes. These characteristics responds to the MC package characteristics associated with higher levels of job satisfaction the most compared to the other MC package configurations, and therefor the devolved MC package configurations is suggested to be associated with higher levels of job satisfaction. The characteristics of the devolved MC package of Sankt Kors were also found to be enablers of self-leadership that were strongly expressed to be important for the job satisfaction of Sankt Kors. The result indicates that the MC package characteristics that were found associated with job satisfaction, are characteristics of the MC package designed around self-leadership, indicating designing an MC package around self-leadership is associated with higher levels of job satisfaction.