A Conceptual Model to Identify the Organizational Relationships and Appropriate Control Mechanisms

Many researchers have continually paid attention to the relationships between transparency, trust and their reciprocal impacts. Although, prior studies point out that the different levels of trust and transparency have effects on the organizational relationships, and consequently affect on required control mechanisms; little attention has been given to these concepts and their mutual impacts. Therefore, there is still a gap in determining the control mechanisms which are appropriate for each kind of organizational relationship. Thus, this paper first provides an introduction to the available literature regarding transparency, trust and control mechanisms. Then, it presents a theoretical foundation to bring up four types of organizational relationships; Principal-Agent, Principal-Steward, Joint Venture and Oneness which are shaped based on particular combination of different levels of trust and control. Given that each type of organizational relationship requires its own special control mechanism, the main aim of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework to determine the appropriate and relevant control mechanism for each kind of organizational relationship within the organization.