Management control: concepts, methods and practices

Abstract

Management Control: Concept, Methods and Practices' conceptualises management control concepts, methods and practices used by C-level executives and controllers in managing financial and strategic performance. The authors show how financial and strategic performance control processes can be integrated in order to create and improve internal strategic alignment. Alongside traditional controls, such as managing cost centres, profit centres, investment centres, budgeting and variance reporting, the use of advanced costing systems, such as activity-based costing and time-driven activity-based costing, and the balanced scorecard in planning and executing improvements of financial and strategic performance is discussed. The authors illustrate how controllers can run a control process in which intended strategies, performance measures, performance targets, actions and budgets are all aligned with each other across all organisational levels (vertical alignment) and between business units and functions (horizontal alignment), and in which financial performance is controlled in relation to strategic performance