Temporal structuring and the improvisation of management control in palm oil processing

Purpose The key motivation of our research is to explore the complexities of management control in a complicated process of palm oil production setting. We seek to unpack the ways in which refinery operations staff (re)construct adaptive practices to manage temporal uncertainties and competing obsessions to effectively control the volatile and highly uncertain palm oil production processes of a large refinery in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach Our research adopts a qualitative methodology, framed around an ethnographic case study that utilizes multiple methods of data collection and analysis including observations, interviews, and document analysis. We observe how the key production processes and conduct eighty-one interviews with managers and workers who engage in inter-retro-actions around organizational decisions to prioritise a market aesthetic that results in highly uncertain manufacturing processes in the complex setting of palm oil refining. Findings Using the lens of improvisation in a complex organizational process (Amit and Knowles, 2017; Cunha et al., 2017; Weick, 2024), we explore the ambitious yet complex production dynamics, and the competing control pressures to meet an acceptable aesthetic quality within an acceptable cost of palm oil production. Our findings provide insight into how actors construct improvised incremental control across the palm oil production processes. Our findings provide a better understanding of how complex production processes such as palm oil face temporal uncertainties that lead to the necessity to craft temporal adaptive process routines. Originality/value We contribute by revealing the temporality of flexible control where actors cultivate temporary buffers or momentary improvisations to manage temporal uncertainties in a complex process industry setting. We uncover the fluid site of control where actors engage in temporary coordination of in-present-improvisational actions to alter temporal uncertainties due to attending to competing targets. We contend that much can be learned about interpersonal autonomous control in managing volatility and repairing control breakdowns in complex production processes that cannot simply be forecasted with sufficient accuracy. We believe that interpersonal reflection-in-actions becomes a necessity when standardized or controlled environments seek to achieve contradictory goals.