When asking what is managerial control we must first define what control is. Control is the process of monitoring activities to ensure that they are being accomplished as planned and of correcting any significant deviations. The purpose of control is to ensure that activities are completed in ways that lead to the accomplishment of organisational goals.
Managerial control comprises of three main activities which are: Determining the standards, measuring performance and taking corrective action.
The concept of organisational control is implicit in the bureaucratic theory of Max Weber. Associated with this theory are such concepts as 'span of control', 'closeness of supervision' and 'hierarchical authority'. Weber's view tends to include all levels or types of organisational control as being the same. More recently, writers have tended to differentiate the control process between that which emphasises the nature of the organisational or systems design and that which deals with daily operations. To illustrate the difference, we 'evaluate' the performance of a system to see how effective and efficient the design proved to be or to discover why it failed. In contrast, we operate and 'control' the system with respect to the daily inputs of material, information and energy. In both instances, the elements of feedback are present, but organisational control tends to review and evaluate the nature and arrangement of components in the system whereas operational control tends to adjust the daily inputs.
Managerial control comprises of three main activities which are: Determining the standards, measuring performance and taking corrective action.
The concept of organisational control is implicit in the bureaucratic theory of Max Weber. Associated with this theory are such concepts as 'span of control', 'closeness of supervision' and 'hierarchical authority'. Weber's view tends to include all levels or types of organisational control as being the same. More recently, writers have tended to differentiate the control process between that which emphasises the nature of the organisational or systems design and that which deals with daily operations. To illustrate the difference, we 'evaluate' the performance of a system to see how effective and efficient the design proved to be or to discover why it failed. In contrast, we operate and 'control' the system with respect to the daily inputs of material, information and energy. In both instances, the elements of feedback are present, but organisational control tends to review and evaluate the nature and arrangement of components in the system whereas operational control tends to adjust the daily inputs.
