Management control (MC) design is crucial to the success of buyer-supplier relationships, yet we know little about how a buying company designs the management controls (MCs) of such relationships over time. In this paper, we use data collected in a six-year field study on the design of the MCs of a new facilities management (FM) outsourcing relationship. We find that boundary spanners learn to control in multiple ways, including trial and error, advice from third parties, experimentation, cross-level learning (i.e., corporate boundary spanners learning from operating boundary spanners), and advice from the partner. Moreover, the role of boundary spanners influences their focus of learning attention, with corporate boundary spanners focusing more on strategic aspects of the relationship (such as reducing appropriation concerns), and operating boundary spanners focusing more on FM activities and the coordination problems related to these activities. The lessons learned by both types of boundary spanners lead to the design of different types of control.

管理控制（MC）设计对于买卖双方关系的成功至关重要，但是我们对买方公司如何设计这种关系的管理控制（MC）的时间知之甚少。在本文中，我们使用了为期六年的实地研究收集的数据，这些数据是关于新设施管理（FM）外包关系的MC的设计的。我们发现边界扳手可以通过多种方式学习控制，包括反复试验，第三方的建议，实验，跨级别学习（即公司边界扳手向运营边界扳手学习）以及合作伙伴的建议。此外，边界扳手的作用会影响他们的学习重点，而公司边界扳手则更多地关注关系的战略方面（例如减少拨款问题），和边界操作员更多地关注FM活动以及与这些活动相关的协调问题。两种类型的边界扳手都汲取了教训，导致设计了不同类型的控件。