The above studies provide valuable insights into how knowledge-based workers
are managed in a professional services environment. Personnel controls in this
environment assists in developing an employee’s skills, knowledge and motivation to
the effect that employees behave in ways that are instrumental to the implementation of a particular strategy (Bowan and Ostroff, 2004). This is a step to achieving superior
performance (Delery and Doty, 1998). Although personnel controls are considered a
vital means in the management of people in PSFs, in the process of managing
knowledge workers there is still a lack of knowledge about the effectiveness of
personnel controls within knowledge intensive settings. In this context, the initial
research objective is to examine the impact of personnel control on the performance of
knowledge-based firms.