Open Discussion: Understanding Effectual Control

[NickDew]

A central aspect of effectuation is the notion of control. One way of
thinking about effectuation as a theory is that it’s a set of
heuristic elements that are connected with each other through the
common bond of control. Hence, the “logic” of control in
effectuation.
Effectuation’s control orientation is logical for another reason too –
which is that although prediction can be used for control, in the
unpredictable circumstances of venturing prediction can’t be trusted
very much. Therefore, it’s logical to privilege other control
techniques.
So really, effectual thinking seems to involve a significant emphasis
on control. And this seems pretty reasonable from a couple of
different standpoints:
- Practice, where a lot of research suggests that control is one of
the main attractions of entrepreneurship - maybe the main attraction
(I’m thinking of Benz and Frey’s work: “Being independent is a great
thing” because it creates higher satisfaction but also the argument
that entrepreneurs get more bang for the buck from their human capital
than workers do because they control how its applied).
- Theory, where from the standpoint of psychology, the non-role of
desire for personal control in entrepreneurship theory seems weird,
since many researchers have argued that control is one of the most
important drivers of human behavior (here, I’m thinking, among others,
of work by Seligman since my read of the positive psychology movement
is that it puts significant emphasis on the benefits of personal
control).
So, it would seem to make sense that entrepreneurs’ control
preferences would extend to the way they run their ventures – with the
techniques and methods they use – since this would be consistent with
their reasons for being an entrepreneur in the first place. Which
brings me to a couple of questions:
First, though emphasizing use of your means (bird in the hand),
affordable loss, partnering with self-selected stakeholders and
leveraging contingency are all control mechanisms, I’m wondering if
these cover most of the mechanism space or whether there are other
frequently used control mechanisms out there that researchers have
observed, that could be incorporated into effectuation theory; and -
Second, I’m wondering to what extent form follows function, i.e.
whether affordable loss manifests itself in different ways in
different environments. As we say in England, “there are lots of
different ways to skin a cat” - but the underlying function is still
to skin the cat.