Justice as a rationale for the controllability principle: A study of managers’ opinions

The controllability principle, which stipulates that managers should only be evaluated based on elements that they can control, has been widely studied in the management control literature, both from theoretical and empirical perspectives. It is based on the idea that the principle leads to better satisfaction of the managers through the neutralization of uncontrollable items in their performance assessment, because it brings fairness in the evaluation. The paper focuses on the managers’ opinions concerning the relevancy of these neutralization processes, as regard three types of uncontrollable factors. It develops a conceptual framework to support hypotheses that managers wish the principle to be applied and conducts a survey of 265 French managers. Both quantitative and qualitative results show a significant difference according to whether uncontrollable factors are external to the company or internal (interdependencies and hierarchical decisions), offering new insight as concerns the rationale for the controllability principle.