Fundamental of CONTROL introduction to management

Editor's Notes

• #3: What is controlling? It’s the process of monitoring, comparing, and correcting work performance. All managers should control even if their units are performing as planned because they can’t really know that unless they’ve evaluated what activities have been done and compared actual performance against the desired standard. Effective controls ensure that activities are completed in ways that lead to the attainment of goals. Whether controls are effective, then, is determined by how well they help employees and managers achieve their goals.
• #4: Why is control so important? Planning can be done, an organizational structure created to facilitate efficient achievement of goals, and employees motivated through effective leadership. But there’s no assurance that activities are going as planned and that the goals employees and managers are working toward are, in fact, being attained. Control is important, therefore, because it’s the only way that managers know whether organizational goals are being met and if not, the reasons why. The value of the control function can be seen in three specific areas: planning, empowering employees, and protecting the workplace. Many managers are reluctant to empower their employees because they fear something will go wrong for which they would be held responsible. But an effective control system can provide information and feedback on employee performance and minimize the chance of potential problems. The final reason why managers control is to protect the organization and its assets. Today’s environment brings heightened threats from natural disasters, financial scandals, workplace violence, global supply chain disruptions, security breaches, and even possible terrorist attacks. Managers must protect organizational assets in the event that any of these things should happen.
• #5: Controlling provides a critical link back to planning. (See Exhibit 10-1.) If managers didn’t control, they’d have no way of knowing whether their goals and plans were being achieved and what future actions to take.
• #6: The control process is a three-step process of measuring actual performance, comparing actual performance against a standard, and taking managerial action to correct deviations or to address inadequate standards. The control process assumes that performance standards already exist, and they do. They’re the specific goals created during the planning process.
• #8: To determine what actual performance is, a manager must first get information about it. Thus, the first step in control is measuring. What is measured is probably more critical to the control process than how it’s measured. Why? Because selecting the wrong criteria can create serious problems. Besides, what is measured often determines what employees will do. Most work activities can be expressed in quantifiable terms. However, managers should use subjective measures when they can’t. Although such measures may have limitations, they’re better than having no standards at all and doing no controlling.
• #9: Four approaches used by managers to measure and report actual performance are personal observations, statistical reports, oral reports, and written reports. Exhibit 10-3 summarizes the advantages and drawbacks of each approach. Most managers use a combination of these approaches.
• #10: The comparing step determines the variation between actual performance and the standard. Although some variation in performance can be expected in all activities, it’s critical to determine an acceptable range of variation.
• #12: Let’s work through an example. Chris Tanner is a sales manager for Green Earth Gardening Supply, a distributor of specialty plants and seeds in the Pacific Northwest. Chris prepares a report during the first week of each month that describes sales for the previous month, classified by product line. Exhibit 10-5 displays both the sales goals (standard) and actual sales figures for the month of June. After looking at the numbers, should Chris be concerned? Sales were a bit higher than originally targeted, but does that mean there were no significant deviations? That depends on what Chris thinks is significant; that is, outside the acceptable range of variation. Even though overall performance was generally quite favorable, some product lines need closer scrutiny. For instance, if sales of heirloom seeds, flowering bulbs, and annual flowers continue to be over what was expected, Chris might need to order more product from nurseries to meet customer demand. Because sales of vegetable plants were 15 percent below goal, Chris may need to run a special on them. As this example shows, both overvariance and undervariance may require managerial attention, which is the third step in the control process.
• #13: Managers can choose among three possible courses of action: do nothing, correct the actual performance, or revise the standards. Because “do nothing” is self-explanatory, let’s look at the other two. One decision a manager must make is whether to take immediate corrective action, which corrects problems at once to get performance back on track, or to use basic corrective action, which looks at how and why performance deviated before correcting the source of deviation.
• #14: It’s possible that the variance was a result of an unrealistic standard—too low or too high a goal. In that situation, the standard needs the corrective action, not the performance. If performance consistently exceeds the goal, then a manager should look at whether the goal is too easy and needs to be raised. On the other hand, managers must be cautious about revising a standard downward.
• #15: Exhibit 10-6 summarizes the decisions a manager makes in controlling.
• #16: Performance is the end result of an activity. And whether that activity is hours of intense practice before a concert or race or whether it’s carrying out job responsibilities as efficiently and effectively as possible, performance is what results from that activity. Managers are concerned with organizational performance—the accumulated results of all the organization’s work activities. It’s a multifaceted concept, but managers need to understand the factors that contribute to organizational performance.
• #17: Productivity is the amount of goods or services produced divided by the inputs needed to generate that output. Organizations and individual work units want to be productive. They want to produce the most goods and services using the least amount of inputs. Output is measured by the sales revenue an organization receives when goods are sold (selling price × number sold). Input is measured by the costs of acquiring and transforming resources into outputs. Organizational effectiveness is a measure of how appropriate organizational goals are and how well those goals are met. That’s the bottom line for managers, and it’s what guides managerial decisions in designing strategies and work activities and in coordinating the work of employees.
• #18: Rankings are a popular way for managers to measure their organization’s performance. And there’s not a shortage of these rankings as Exhibit 10-7 shows. Rankings are determined by specific performance measures, which are different for each list.
• #19: It’s particularly important for managers to deliver effective performance feedback and to be prepared, if needed, to use disciplinary actions—actions taken by a manager to enforce the organization’s work standards and regulation We like to know how we’re doing. Managers need to provide their employees with feedback so that the employees know where they stand in terms of their work. When giving performance feedback, both parties need to feel heard, understood, and respected. And if done that way, positive outcomes can result.
• #20: Exhibit 10-8 lists some common types of work discipline problems and examples of each. In those circumstances, it’s important for a manager to know what the organization’s policies are on discipline. Is there a process for dealing with unsatisfactory job performance? Do warnings need to be given when performance is inadequate? What happens if after the warnings, performance or the troublesome behavior doesn’t improve? Disciplinary actions are never easy or pleasant; however, discipline can be used to both control and correct employee performance, and managers must know how to discipline.
• #21: The most desirable type of control—feedforward control—prevents problems because it takes place before the actual activity. The key to feedforward controls is taking managerial action before a problem occurs. That way, problems can be prevented rather than having to correct them after any damage (poor-quality products, lost customers, lost revenue, etc.) has already been done. Concurrent control, as its name implies, takes place while a work activity is in progress. The best-known form of concurrent control is direct supervision. Another term for it is management by walking around, which is when a manager is in the work area interacting directly with employees. The most popular type of control relies on feedback. In feedback control, the control takes place after the activity is done. Feedback controls have two advantages. First, feedback gives managers meaningful information on how effective their planning efforts were. Feedback that shows little variance between standard and actual performance indicates that the planning was generally on target. Second, feedback can enhance motivation. People want to know how well they’re doing and feedback provides that information
• #22: Managers can implement controls before an activity begins, during the time the activity is going on, and after the activity has been completed. The first type is called feedforward control; the second, concurrent control; and the last, feedback control (see Exhibit 10-9).
• #23: Every business wants to earn a profit. To achieve this goal, managers need financial controls. For instance, they might analyze quarterly income statements for excessive expenses. They might also calculate financial ratios to ensure that sufficient cash is available to pay ongoing expenses, that debt levels haven’t become too high, or that assets are used productively. Budgets are planning and control tools. When a budget is formulated, it’s a planning tool because it indicates which work activities are important and what and how much resources should be allocated to those activities. But budgets are also used for controlling because they provide managers with quantitative standards against which to measure and compare resource consumption. If deviations are significant enough to require action, the manager examines what has happened and tries to uncover why.
• #24: Managers might use traditional financial measures such as ratio analysis and budget analysis. Exhibit 10-10 summarizes some of the most popular financial ratios. Liquidity ratios measure an organization’s ability to meet its current debt obligations. Leverage ratios examine the organization’s use of debt to finance its assets and whether it’s able to meet the interest payments on the debt. Activity ratios assess how efficiently a company uses its assets. Finally, profitability ratios measure how efficiently and effectively the company uses its assets to generate profits. These ratios are calculated using selected information from the organization’s two primary financial statements (the balance sheet and the income statement), which are then expressed as a percentage or ratio.
• #26: In measuring actual performance, managers need information about what is happening within their area of responsibility and about the standards in order to be able to compare actual performance with the standard. A management information system (MIS) is a system used to provide managers with needed information on a regular basis. In theory, this system can be manual or computer-based, although most organizations have moved to computer-supported applications. The term system in MIS implies order, arrangement, and purpose. Further, an MIS focuses specifically on providing managers with information (processed and analyzed data), not merely data (raw, unanalyzed facts).
• #27: The balanced scorecard approach is a way to evaluate organizational performance from more than just the financial perspective. A balanced scorecard typically looks at four areas that contribute to a company’s performance: financial, customer, internal processes, and people/innovation/growth assets. According to this approach, managers should develop goals in each of the four areas and then measure whether the goals are being met.
• #28: Benchmarking is the search for the best practices among competitors or noncompetitors that lead to their superior performance. Benchmarking should identify various benchmarks, the standards of excellence against which to measure and compare.
• #29: Sometimes those best practices can be found inside the organization and just need to be shared. Exhibit 10-11 provides some suggestions for internal benchmarking.
• #30: The concepts of control that we’ve been discussing are appropriate for an organization whose work units are not geographically separated or culturally distinct. But control techniques can be quite different for different countries. The differences are primarily in the measurement and corrective action steps of the control process. Managers in foreign countries also need to be aware of constraints on corrective actions they can take. Some countries’ laws prohibit closing facilities, laying off employees, taking money out of the country, or bringing in a new management team from outside the country.
• #31: If you work, do you think you have a right to privacy at your job? What can your employer find out about you and your work? You might be surprised at the answers! Employers can (and do), among other things, read your e-mail (even those marked “personal or confidential”), tap your telephone, monitor your work by computer, store and review computer files, monitor you in an employee bathroom or dressing room, and track your whereabouts in a company vehicle. And these actions aren’t that uncommon. In fact, some 26 percent of companies have fired an employee for e-mail misuse; 26 percent have fired workers for misusing the Internet; 6 percent have fired employees for inappropriate cell phone use; 4 percent have fired someone for instant messaging misuse; and 3 percent have fired someone for inappropriate text messaging.
• #32: Employee theft is defined as any unauthorized taking of company property by employees for their personal use. It can range from embezzlement to fraudulent filing of expense reports to removing equipment, parts, software, or office supplies from company premises. Managers need to educate themselves about this control issue and be prepared to deal with it. Thankfully the number of workplace shootings has decreased. However, the U.S. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health still says that each year, some 2 million American workers are victims of some form of workplace violence. In an average week, one employee is killed and at least 25 are seriously injured in violent assaults by current or former coworkers.
• #33: What can managers do to deter or reduce possible workplace violence? Once again, the concept of feedforward, concurrent, and feedback control can help identify actions that managers can take. Exhibit 10-13 summarizes several suggestions.
• #35: How can managers control the interactions between the goal and the outcome when it comes to customers? The concept of a service profit chain can help. A service profit chain is the service sequence from employees to customers to profit. According to this concept, the company’s strategy and service delivery system influence how employees deal with customers; that is, how productive they are in providing service and the quality of that service.
• #36: Corporate governance, the system used to govern a corporation so that the interests of corporate owners are protected, failed abysmally at Enron, as it has at many companies caught in financial scandals. In the aftermath of these scandals, corporate governance has been reformed. The original purpose of a board of directors was to have a group, independent from management, looking out for the interests of shareholders who were not involved in the day-to-day management of the organization. However, it didn’t always work that way. Board members often enjoyed a cozy relationship with managers in which each took care of the other. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act puts greater demands on board members of publicly traded companies in the United States to do what they were empowered and expected to do.
• #37: Controlling is the process of monitoring, comparing, and correcting work performance. As the final step in the management process, controlling provides the link back to planning. If managers didn’t control, they’d have no way of knowing whether goals were being met. Control is important because (1) it’s the only way to know if goals are being met, and if not, why; (2) it provides information and feedback so managers feel comfortable empowering employees; and (3) it helps protect an organization and its assets.
• #38: The three steps in the control process are measuring, comparing, and taking action. Measuring involves deciding how to measure actual performance and what to measure. Comparing involves looking at the variation between actual performance and the standard (goal). Deviations outside an acceptable range of variation need attention. Taking action can involve doing nothing, correcting the actual performance, or revising the standards. Doing nothing is self-explanatory. Correcting the actual performance can involve different corrective actions, which can either be immediate or basic. Standards can be revised by either raising or lowering them.
• #39: Organizational performance is the accumulated results of all the organization’s work activities. Three frequently used organizational performance measures include (1) productivity, the output of goods or services produced divided by the inputs needed to generate that output; (2) effectiveness, a measure of how appropriate organizational goals are and how well those goals are being met; and (3) industry and company rankings compiled by various business publications. Employee performance is controlled through effective performance feedback and through disciplinary actions, when needed.
• #40: Feedforward controls take place before a work activity is done. Concurrent controls take place while a work activity is being done. Feedback controls take place after a work activity is done.
• #41: Financial controls that managers can use include financial ratios (liquidity, leverage, activity, and profitability) and budgets. One information control managers can use is an MIS, which provides managers with needed information on a regular basis. Others include comprehensive and secure controls such as data encryption, system firewalls, data back-ups, and so forth that protect the organization’s information.
• #42: Balanced scorecards provide a way to evaluate an organization’s performance in four different areas rather than just from the financial perspective. Benchmarking provides control by finding the best practices among competitors or noncompetitors and from inside the organization itself.
• #43: Adjusting controls for cross-cultural differences may be needed primarily in the areas of measuring and taking corrective actions. Workplace concerns include workplace privacy, employee theft, and workplace violence. For each of these issues, managers need to have policies in place to control inappropriate actions and ensure that work is getting done efficiently and effectively. Control is important to customer interactions because employee service productivity and service quality influences customer perceptions of service value. Organizations want long-term and mutually beneficial relationships among their employees and customers. Corporate governance is the system used to govern a corporation so that the interests of corporate owners are protected.