OE-1.5 Controlling & Performance

Work through these

• Concept and process of controlling

  The last function, and the loop that closes the first one: measure, compare against the plan, correct. It is the same feedback idea an engineer already knows, applied to an organisation.

• Types of control: budgetary and non-budgetary techniques

  The instruments available, split by whether they run on money. Budgets are the dominant form and the one whose distortions are best documented.

• Requirements for effective control

  What makes a control system work rather than merely exist. Timeliness and cost matter as much as accuracy, and a control that costs more than the loss it prevents is not control.

• Use of computers and IT in management control

  Where the machinery of this subject meets the machinery of yours. Read it for the general shape rather than any specific product, because the products change and the problem does not.

• Productivity problems and management

  What productivity actually measures and how it goes wrong. It is the number most likely to be misused in an argument, so it is worth being able to take apart.

• Control and performance

  The link between controlling and what the organisation achieves, which is the point of the whole function. It is also where the measurement problems above become consequences.

• Direct and preventive control

  Correcting after the fact against preventing beforehand. Preventive control is cheaper and harder to justify, which is why organisations under-invest in it.

• Reporting

  How the results travel back up, which is the part of control everyone actually experiences. A report nobody reads is a control that does not exist.