Management Control

This paper is a personal account of the author's involvement with management control research over the past 35 years. The development of management control as a research area is briefly reviewed, culminating with its transition into performance management. However, the basic issues involved have remained remarkably unchanged over this period, as is illustrated by a number of anecdotes and examples. Some suggestions are made concerning potential topics for future research, together with some final comments on appropriate research methods.

Cada vez mais empresas adotam tipos de controle descentralizados para enfrentar a dinâmica, a complexidade e a hostilidade dos mercados. Atribuindo mais autonomia e responsabilidade aos gerentes de baixo escalao dos diversos segmentos de seus negocios, cada vez mais a questao da determinacao dos precos de transferencia para a coordenacao destes segmentos se torna tambem mais importante. Este trabalho teve por objetivo a analise, atraves do estudo de caso hipotetico para o mercado automobilistico, da metodologia de determinacao de precos de transferencia conhecida como Solucao Dual, e sua comparacao com os metodos convencionais. Este estudo concluiu que o metodo Solucao Dual nao incorre na maior parte dos problemas dos metodos convencionais, permitindo a avaliacao do centro fornecedor interno pelo resultado financeiro, enquanto possibilita melhores decisoes de curto prazo para os centros compradores, reduz os conflitos entre os centros, o numero de transacoes que diminuem a congruenc...

What practice shows us is that managers' information needs a continuous updating. The management chart is a managing instrument which, together with the management accounting and the budgetary control, stands for supporting management decisions, providing them further data to complete those issued by other means of informing. For Romanian companies which, forced to face transition difficulties have not introduced any centralized management control system yet, this stands for a real instrument to be used in working out and improving management and forecast methods.

The medical profession has always a high degree of autonomy. However, the rapid growth of health care costs that has started in the second half of the last century, has forced governments to tighten the control over medical practice and introduce managers into medical organizations, and also to induce competitive forces in health care systems. However, there is no conclusive evidence that the juxtaposition of bureaucratic and market control mechanisms with the autonomy of the medical profession has led to cost reduction. These actions strengthened, however, the conflict between the role of a manager focused on cost control and the role of a doctor directed towards quality control. One of the key area where the control mechanisms have low efficacy, is treatment of patients with multi chronic conditions, as in this case, the coordination of the therapeutic process must include the alignment of actions of various specialties. At the organization level bureaucratic mechanisms of coordin...

Objective-This research aims to identify a cultural theme embedded in entrepreneurial accounting and construct the form of entrepreneurial accounting. Methodology/Technique-A cognitive anthropology method is employed in this research to investigate the cultural atmosphere of entrepreneurial accounting. This is achieved by conceiving the atmosphere into informants' (owner/entrepreneur-director) mind-set. The research was conducted at various Padang restaurants in Jakarta, Indonesia, that were classified into four groups based on their size and level of complexity. Finding and Novelty-Firstly, a number of cultural themes of entrepreneurial accounting are revealed among the four Padang restaurant groups. There are four similar cultural themes: (a) business process turbulence; (b) togetherness intensity; (c) informal control processes; and (d) formal control processes. Despite the fact that all of the restaurants have similar cultural themes, the elements embedded in each theme are different and require certain adjustments in the design of entrepreneurial accounting based on a profit sharing system. Secondly, a construction of entrepreneurial accounting coloured with a unique socio-cultural background was also discovered. This construction enables owner/entrepreneur-directors to execute work programs with a view to achieving the company's goal to enhance performance, either financially or non-financially.

This paper proposes a preliminary model of a balanced scorecard for tourism destinations, with a specific emphasis on sustainable development. We begin with a review of the perspectives and critical performance variables for the traditional balanced scorecard. We then present empirical work based upon quantitative analysis techniques. A survey was completed by 1531 Spanish municipalities that are oriented towards tourism and have demonstrated interest in management issues. Based on the constructs emerging from this analysis, we then show how the balanced scorecard can be modified to support the strategic planning of tourism destinations. We conclude by discussing the advantages for long-term strategic planning and sustainable tourism management.

This paper presents a description of Human System Audit (HSA), as an integrated proposal for the assessment of intangibles, for quality assessment in excellence models and, in general, for diagnosis and intervention in the human system in organizations, as well as for research on organizational human behaviour. The HSA consists of a theoretical model, a battery of instruments, and a system for management control. The article also describes some applications of HSA to human resource

Management control is increasingly adapted to the changes taking place at inter-firm level of business exchanges. By taking the form of an inter-organizational control, the latter aims to reduce uncertainty, avoid opportunism and seek to make the most of an exchange relationship between two organizations. This article analyses some of the main studies dealing with inter-organizational control in the context of supply chain. We present literature review on this type of control, its typology and its approaches and theories. Thanks to its marine biological heritage, Morocco is a world exporter of sea products. The fish preserve sector occupies an important place in the Moroccan economy with a large turnover. This paper presents an exploratory study of this sector where we try to explain the functioning within the canneries of the Souss Massa region in terms of logistic management, the management control function, the management of transport and costs and finally the performance management methods. Based on 12 interviews with managers of canneries in the region, the results of this exploratory study will form the basis on which we will base our main study.

Budgets have long been the dominant instrument for management control. In recent years however, alternative approaches to management control such as the Balanced Scorecard have been launched. It has even been suggested that organizations should drop the ...

Control is the fundamental function of management, but companies due to the increasingly turbulent environment and public organizations because of purposes ambiguity have to seek more flexible forms of control aimed at self-control. Thus, both sanctions and rewards associated with the control system must be less associated with factors that are external to the organizational member and more with internal stimuli associated with the inner satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. Such an option seems to offer ideological control. The paper is an analysis of ideology as an effective form of control in organizations. Therefore, the fundamental issues of the regarded ideology and control mechanisms related to it have been discussed. The direct appeal to ideology, as a fundamental element of normative control, offers the opportunity to exploit a large body of knowledge from sociology and political science in the service of organizations and management research
Ideological control as an organizational process consists of several stages. In the first stage, employees’ individ-ual ideologies relating to the organization are modified or replaced by the ideology preferred by the organization. Replacement or modification of the ideology usually is rendered by showing the way of transformation from the current criticized reality to the desired vision of the future determined by the new ideology. If members of the organization accept the criticism of the present reality and are attracted by the vision of the future determined by the ideology, they will act in accordance to this ideology. Ideology determines which actions are beneficial to the organization, and which are harmful. Therefore, an organisational actor, whose actions are consistent with the ideology, would obtain rewards, and those whose actions are illegitimate would suffer from sanctions.