STRATEGIES FOR CONTROL IN AN ORGANISATION
Of the four management principles, business or management controls keep the organisation on course.(Williams, nd). Management control describes the means by which the actions of individuals or groups within an organisation are constrained to perform certain actions while avoiding other actions in an effort to achieve organizational goals. The controls are divided into two broad groups which are regulative and normative controls. Within these are several types: under regulative controls are beaurocratic, financial and quality controls and under the normative controls are team norms and organizational and cultural norms.
Regulative controls emanate from standard operating procedures and standing policies within the organisation. People have thought these to be outdated and counterproductive. Helms (2006), states that, “as organizations have become more flexible in recent years by flattening organizational boundaries to include suppliers in inventory management and customers in new product development, forging cooperative alliances with competitors and developing virtual organizations in which employees are geographically dispersed and may meet only a few time each year, critics point out that regulative controls may prevent goal attainment.” Beaurocratic controls are derived from lines of authority which comes with one’s position in the organisational hierarchy. The higher up the chain the more an individual will have authority to dictate policies and procedures. Financial controls include key financial targets which managers are held accountable, and this places a constraint on spending. Quality controls explain the variability of acceptable processes, services or products.
In contrast, normative controls govern employees through patterns of action which are generally acceptable. For example at the Logistics Unit the