ninth edition

STEPHEN P. ROBBINS MARY COULTER

Chapter
Foundations
18 of Control

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All rights reserved. The University of West Alabama
 VAN HALEN –David Lee Roth, M&Ms

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 Control Employee’s Performance

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 Bad Toilet design

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 More Bad designs

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 What Is Control?
• Controlling
 The process of monitoring activities to ensure that
they are being accomplished as planned and of
correcting any significant deviations.
• The Purpose of Control
 To ensure that activities are completed in ways that
lead to accomplishment of organizational goals.

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 Designing Control Systems
• Market Control
 Emphasizes the use of external market mechanisms
to establish the standards used in the control system.
 External measures: price competition and relative
market share
• Bureaucratic Control
 Emphasizes organizational authority and relies on
rules, regulations, procedures, and policies.
• Clan Control
 Regulates behavior by shared values, norms,
traditions, rituals, and beliefs of the firm’s culture.

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 Exhibit 18–1 Characteristics of Three Approaches to Control Systems

Type of Control Characteristics

Market Uses external market mechanisms, such as price competition
and relative market share, to establish standards used in
system. Typically used by organizations whose products or
services are clearly specified and distinct and that face
considerable marketplace competition.

Bureaucratic Emphasizes organizational authority. Relies on administrative

and hierarchical mechanisms, such as rules, regulations,
procedures, policies, standardization of activities, well-
defined job descriptions, and budgets to ensure that
employees exhibit appropriate behaviors and meet
performance standards.

Clan Regulates employee behavior by the shared values, norms,

traditions, rituals, beliefs, and other aspects of the
organization’s culture. Often used by organizations in which
teams are common and technology is changing rapidly.

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 Why Is Control Important?
• As the final link in management functions:
 Planning
 Controls
let managers know whether their goals
and plans are on target and what future actions to
take.
 Empowering employees
 Control systems provide managers with information
and feedback on employee performance.
 Protecting the workplace
 Controls enhance physical security and help
minimize workplace disruptions.

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 Exhibit 18–2 The Planning–Controlling Link

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 The Control Process
• The Process of Control
1. Measuring actual
performance.
2. Comparing actual
performance against a
standard.
3. Taking action to correct
deviations or inadequate
standards.

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 Exhibit 18–3 The Control Process

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 Measuring: How and What We Measure
• Control
SourcesCriteria
of Information
(What) (How)
 Employees
Personal observation
 Statistical
 Satisfaction
reports
 Oral
 Turnover
reports
 Written
 Absenteeism
reports
 Budgets
 Costs

 Output

 Sales

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 Exhibit 18–4 Common Sources of Information
for Measuring Performance

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 Comparing
• Determining the degree of variation between
actual performance and the standard.
 Significance of variation is determined by:
 The acceptable range of variation from the
standard (forecast or budget).
 The size (large or small) and direction (over or
under) of the variation from the standard (forecast
or budget).

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 Exhibit 18–5 Defining the Acceptable Range of Variation

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 Exhibit 18–6 Sales Performance Figures for July,
Eastern States Distributors

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 Taking Managerial Action
• Courses of Action
 “Doing nothing”
 Only
if deviation is judged to be insignificant.
 Correcting actual (current) performance
 Immediate corrective action to correct the problem
at once.
 Basic corrective action to locate and to correct the
source of the deviation.
 Corrective Actions
– Change strategy, structure, compensation scheme, or
training programs; redesign jobs; or fire employees

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 Taking Managerial Action (cont’d)
• Courses of Action (cont’d)
 Revising the standard
 Examining the standard to ascertain whether or not
the standard is realistic, fair, and achievable.
– Upholding the validity of the standard.
– Resetting goals that were initially set too low or too high.

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 Exhibit 18–7 Managerial Decisions in the Control Process

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 Controlling for Organizational
Performance
• What Is Performance?
 The end result of an activity
• What Is Organizational
Performance?
 The accumulated end results of all of the
organization’s work processes and activities
 Designing strategies, work processes, and work
activities.
 Coordinating the work of employees.

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 Organizational Performance Measures
• Organizational Productivity
 Productivity: the overall output of goods and/or
services divided by the inputs needed to generate
that output.
 Output: sales revenues
 Inputs: costs of resources (materials, labor
expense, and facilities)
 Ultimately, productivity is a measure of how efficiently
employees do their work.

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 Organizational Performance Measures
• Organizational Effectiveness
 Measuring how appropriate organizational goals are
and how well the organization is achieving its goals.

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 Industry and Company Rankings
• Corporate
Industry rankings
Culture on:
Audits
•  Profits
Compensation and benefits surveys
 Return on revenue
• Customer satisfaction
 Return on shareholders’ equity
surveys
 Growth in profits
 Revenues per employee
 Revenues per dollar of assets
 Revenues per dollar of equity

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 Exhibit 18–8 Popular Industry and Company Rankings

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 Tools for Controlling Organizational
Performance
• Feedforward Control
 A control that prevents anticipated problems before
actual occurrences of the problem.
 Building in quality through design.
 Requiring suppliers conform to ISO 9002.

• Concurrent Control
 A control that takes place while the monitored activity
is in progress.
 Direct supervision: management by walking
around.

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 Exhibit 18–9 Types of Control

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 Tools for Controlling Organizational
Performance (cont’d)
• Feedback Control
 A control that takes place after an activity is done.
 Corrective action is after-the-fact, when the
problem has already occurred.
 Advantages of feedback controls:
 Provide managers with information on the
effectiveness of their planning efforts.
 Enhance employee motivation by providing them
with information on how well they are doing.

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 Tools for Controlling Organizational
Performance: Financial Controls
• Traditional Controls • Other Measures
 Ratio analysis  Economic Value Added
 Liquidity (EVA)
 Market Value Added
 Leverage
(MVA)
 Activity

 Profitability
 Budget Analysis
 Quantitative
standards
 Deviations

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 Exhibit 18–10 Popular Financial Ratios

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 Exhibit 18–10 Popular Financial Ratios (cont’d)

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 Controlling Organizational Performance
• Balanced Scorecard
 Is a measurement tool that uses goals set by
managers in four areas to measure a company’s
performance:
 Financial

 Customer

 Internal processes

 People/innovation/growth assets

 Is intended to emphasize that all of these areas are

important to an organization’s success and that there
should be a balance among them.

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 Information Controls
• Purposes of Information Controls
 As a tool to help managers control other
organizational activities.
 Managers need the right information at the right
time and in the right amount.
 As an organizational area that managers need to
control.
 Managers must have comprehensive and secure
controls in place to protect the organization’s
important information.

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 Information Controls
• Management Information Systems (MIS)
 A system used to provide management with needed
information on a regular basis.
 Data: an unorganized collection of raw, unanalyzed
facts (e.g., unsorted list of customer names).
 Information: data that has been analyzed and
organized such that it has value and relevance to
managers.

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 Benchmarking of Best Practices
• Benchmark
 The standard of excellence against which to measure
and compare.
• Benchmarking
 Is the search for the best practices among
competitors or noncompetitors that lead to their
superior performance.
 Is a control tool for identifying and measuring specific
performance gaps and areas for improvement.

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 Exhibit 18–11 Steps to Successfully Implement an Internal
Benchmarking Best Practices Program

1. Connect best practices to strategies and goals.

2. Identify best practices throughout the organization.
3. Develop best practices reward and recognition
systems.
4. Communicate best practices throughout the
organization.
5. Create a best practices knowledge-sharing system.
6. Nurture best practices on an ongoing basis.

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 Contemporary Issues in Control
• Cross-Cultural Issues
 The use of technology to increase direct corporate
control of local operations
 Legal constraints on corrective actions in foreign
countries
 Difficulty with the comparability of data collected from
operations in different countries

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 Contemporary Issues in Control (cont’d)
• Workplace Concerns
 Workplace privacy versus workplace monitoring:
 E-mail,
telephone, computer, and Internet usage
 Productivity, harassment, security, confidentiality,
intellectual property protection
 Employee theft
 The unauthorized taking of company property by
employees for their personal use.
 Workplace violence
 Anger, rage, and violence in the workplace is
affecting employee productivity.

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 Exhibit 18–12
Types of Workplace
Monitoring by
Employers

Source: American Management

Association/ePolicy Institute Research, “2005
Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey,”
American Management Association.
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 Contemporary Issues in Control (cont’d)
• Customer Interactions
 Service profit chain
 Is the service sequence from employees to
customers to profit.
 Service capability affects service value which impacts
on customer satisfaction that, in turn, leads to
customer loyalty in the form of repeat business
(profit).

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 Contemporary Issues in Control (cont’d)
• Corporate Governance
 The system used to govern a corporation so that the
interests of the corporate owners are protected.
 Changes in the role of boards of directors
 Increased scrutiny of financial reporting (Sarbanes-
Oxley Act of 2002)
– More disclosure and transparency of corporate financial
information
– Certification of financial results by senior management

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 seatwork
• Suggest possible controlling methods to
control student cheating.
Before it happens
While in class while exams are being
completed
After it has happened

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 Terms to Know
• controlling • productivity
• market control • organizational
• bureaucratic control effectiveness
• clan control • feedforward control
• control process • concurrent control
• range of variation • management by walking
• immediate corrective around
action • feedback control
• basic corrective action • economic value added
• performance (EVA)
• organizational • market value added
performance (MVA)

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