Administrative Control in Small Business Organizations in the Philippines

This article reports on the study of the control practices of managers of small business organizations of the Philippines. Where possible, results are compared with those obtained from similar surveys conducted by the author elsewhere in the region. Among the hypothesized ¡°determinants¡± of control, the perception of interdependency among organizational components appear to have the strongest impact. Surprisingly, the perception of external uncertainty seem to have little effect on the level of control, leading us to conclude that the relationship between the two variables is best described by a U-shaped curve. The relationship between control and performance is an extremely complex one, considering that either variable may be the dependent one. Interestingly, however, the observed relationship between the level of control ¨C here treated as the dependent variable ¨C and perceived performance appears to be flat within the relevant range. The paper concludes by showing that Filipino managers exercise significantly more control power than their counterparts in both Hong Kong and Singapore, thus confirming Hofstedes earlier findings on what he termed power distance.