Chapter 3 – Action, Personnel, and Cultural Controls

ACTION CONTROLS
Action controls are the most direct form of management control because they involve taking steps to ensure that employees act in the organization’s best interest by making their actions themselves the focus of control. Can be in 4 forms: behavioural constraints, preaction reviews, action accountability, and redundancy.

Behavioural Constraints * Are a “negative” form of action control. They make it difficult for employees to do things that should not be done – these constraints can be applied physically of administratively * Physical constraints – locks, computer passwords, limits on access to areas where valuable inventories and sensitive information are kept * Effective physical constraints are crucial especially due to increased data protection and privacy concerns faced by virtually all organizations that electronically store info about their clients, customers, patients, or citizens * Administrative constraints can also be used to place limits on an employee’s ability to perform all or a portion of specific tasks or actions – involves the restriction of decision making authority, separation of duties (internal control) * Physical and administrative constraints can be combined into what is known as proka-yokes designed to make the system foolproof – poka-yoke is a step built into a process to prevent deviation from the correct order of steps; that is, where a certain action must be completed before the next-step can be performed

Preaction reviews * Involve the scrutiny of the action plans of the employees being controlled * Reviewers can approve or disapprove the proposed actions, ask for modifications, or ask for a more carefully considered plan before granting final approval * Commonly done during planning and budgeting processes characterized by