Control Theory and Social Behavior in the Workplace
通过两个实验质疑控制理论对工作场所监督行为的解释力，发现主管对下属绩效的反馈并非如理论预测的直接响应，而是基于对绩效情境意义的分析。
Recent theoretical statements by Lord and Hanges (1987) and by Carver and Scheier (1981) suggest that supervision in the workplace can be analyzed as a control system made up of supervisors and subordinates. Two experiments are described which raise doubts about this claim. Subjects were engaged as supervisors and asked to provide performance feedback to a subordinate. It was found that subjects did not respond to subordinate work performance in the straightforward way predicted by control theory, but instead responded based on analyses of the context-dependent meanings of that performance. Implications of these results for applying the control system metaphor to social behavior in the workplace more generally are discussed.