Effects of Planning systems of Universities on Management Control Systems and Organizational Performance : A case study at KTH

Abstract: Plannings systems which can be considered as modules of an Enterprise Resource Planning system play a vital role in different types of organizations. The effects of the planning systems towards the Management Control Systems and organizational performance are less investigated in the context of not-for-profit/service providing organizations. This study sheds light on the effects of the planning systems on informal management controls and non-financial organizational performance by investigating the Swedish university sector through a case study performed at the Royal Institute of technology where the data were gathered using semi-structured interviews from different administrators using the planning systems. The study presents the effects of ten planning systems towards personnel controls, cultural controls and planning & decision making controls. It further examines how the planning systems affect the personnel development, workplace relationships, employee satisfaction and other type of organizational performance measures. In this endeavour, the results of this study shows how the personnel controls affects the personnel development, cultural controls affects the workplace relationships and planning & decision making controls affects the employee satisfaction, all in the light of different planning systems. Furthermore, it was also found out how different planning systems affect different organizational performance measures, namely, quality and efficiency of processes, quality of staff, employee health & safety, gender equality, premises and infrastructure, student attractiveness, quality assurance, research & education and external professional relationships. Finally this study generalizes the results found through investigating each planning system, which can be applied to the university sector/not-for-profit organizational sector in Sweden.