Using AI-based monitoring technologies in management control

The author asserts that alternative monitoring technologies will broaden the scope of contractual choices and thereby increase the likelihood of congruence with the organization´s objectives, even in those cases where issues of measurability are ill defined. He reviews agency theory with particular reference to implications for organization theory; links agency theory with the empirical and theoretical literature on the managerial task of environmental scanning; describes an AI (artifical intelligence)-based system for facilitating scanning activities; and presents results of a laboratory test of the system´s effect on trust in the scanning manager. He provides evidence for the hypothesis that using machine induction can provide information that increases principal trust in agent behavior