STRATEGIC CONTROL

Strategic Control
Controlling is one of the important functions of management, and is often regarded as the core of the management process. It is a function intended to ensure and make possible the performance of planned activities and to achieve the pre-determined goals and results. Control is intended to regulate and check, i.e., to structure and condition the behaviour of events and people, to place restraints and curbs on undesirable tendencies, to make people conform to certain norms and standards, to measure progress to keep the system on track. It is also to ensure that what is planned is translated into results, to keep a watch on proper use of resources, on safeguarding of assets and so on.

The controlling function involves monitoring the activity and measuring results against pre-established standards, analysing and correcting deviations as necessary and maintaining/adapting the system. It is intended to enable the organisation to continuously learn from its experience and to improve its capability to cope with the demands of organisational growth and development. The process of control has the following elements:

(a) Objectives of the business system which could be operationalized into measurable and controllable standards.

(b) A mechanism for monitoring and measuring the performance of the system.

(c) A mechanism

 (i) for comparing the actual results with reference to the standards

(ii) for detecting deviations from standards and

(iii) for learning new insights on standards themselves.

(d) A mechanism for feeding back corrective and adaptive information and instructions to the system, for effecting the desired changes to set right the system to keep it on course.