In any modern organization, leadership is possible thanks to the achievement of agreements between the people who make up the leadership team. We will qualify according to a common decision, which is reached through mature negotiation between all those responsible or participants in the management of the Company. In this way it is possible that it can be managed efficiently and profitably, following a well-defined vision and mission drawn up in accordance with a strategic plan.
To administer, administrators or managers rationally conduct the activities of the organization, whether for profit or not for profit. This implies the planning, organization, direction and control of all activities, functions or tasks. Without well-taken action plans, organizations would never have the conditions to exist and grow.
management-information-systems-and-management-control-1For all the above, the role of administrators and managers is of utmost importance. They are responsible for making things happen, whether good or bad. That simple Without good planning, organization, direction and control, companies cannot function successfully and achieve the proposed goals and objectives. Much less, they can be profitable and competitive. He is the administrator or manager, that figure of great value, the main axis, the leader, the guide and promoter that things happen and that everyone follows the correct route. Otherwise, each one would follow a different course and different interests.
There is a business management. To do business, the men that society has coined are entrepreneurs. The smooth running of business is only possible through information that, programs in time, form, sequence and opportunity, constitute a system that we call "management control." We thus have a "business management" in charge of the entrepreneurs and a "management control" in charge of specialists, that is, of those who know how to do it.
Management information systems are part of 'management control', which encompasses an additional set of elements. "There is no consensus on the definition of the term" management information system. " Some authors prefer to use an alternative terminology such as: "information processing system", "information and decision system", "information system for the organization", to refer to the computer-based information processing system "1
The more finished the information systems are, the more efficiently they cover their part in management control.The integrated information systems minimize the uncertainty that everyone faces when they must assume responsibility for making a decision that involves them and that compromises human resources., financial, natural, technological, etc.
II.- INSUFFICIENCIES OF THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN FAMILY BUSINESSES
It is known that management information systems (with an acceptable degree of integration), this is a system designed as a planned federation of small systems, are routinely used in multinational, transnational companies and large corporations. In large and medium-sized companies, two different situations are observed. When the management is in charge of members of the family that owns the company, without professional training, the information systems are precarious, limited and lacking in integration. When professional executives are in command positions, there are information systems in place, if not in full at least in part, and there is a real concern to have them available.
A very generalized experience tells us that we can verify in practice, the existence of the following deficiencies or insufficiencies:
1- In a not inconsiderable amount of this type of company, they do not know how much or what information they need to conduct their business. This painful but real situation is due to the fact that they have never stopped to reflect on the tremendous importance of management information systems. Information processing is one of the main activities of society. A significant portion of staff time and work is spent searching for and assimilating information.
2- Information processing by computers is common practice in most companies. It is used by entrepreneurs, professionals, retail businesses, in short, many people and institutions. The doctor receives computerized information and a computer keeps his accounts receivable; The farmer controls the relationship between the increase in the weight of his cattle and the cost of the ration consumed per head, using a computer service. Every day more people and institutions use computers to keep track of their activities, making the use of computers one of the most suitable means to ensure that a management information system operates as it should.
“Information system applications should not require users who are computer experts. However, users need to be able to specify the information requirements ”2
3- The balance sheets provide us with information that allows us to have a vision of the company as a whole. Especially in its modern conception of "differential balance", which presents, in addition to the financial situation at the beginning and at the end of a year, separately, the causes that motivated the differences in the period analyzed. They inform us about the financial situation of a firm, the comparison of balance sheets allows us to determine, among other things, if the net worth of a company increases or decreases. This information is, of course, of a fundamental nature. There is another set of statistical and information series that establish how each area operates in particular. Data on units produced, percentage of occupation of industrial equipment,The relationship between hours paid to production personnel and hours dedicated to manufacturing, for example, makes the state of efficiency of a production department explicit. We see therefore that there is information about the company in general, that is; on "Company things"; and other information on the operations of the company, or in other words, the result of the '' decisions made by the people responsible for driving ”, decisions that according to Newman,“ is the direction that has been defined as the guide, conducting and controlling the efforts of a group of individuals towards a common goal. ”3on "Company things"; and other information on the operations of the company, or in other words, the result of the '' decisions made by the people responsible for driving ”, decisions that according to Newman,“ is the direction that has been defined as the guide, conducting and controlling the efforts of a group of individuals towards a common goal. ”3on "Company things"; and other information on the operations of the company, or in other words, the result of the '' decisions made by the people responsible for driving ”, decisions that according to Newman,“ is the direction that has been defined as the guide, conducting and controlling the efforts of a group of individuals towards a common goal. ”3
Information about people and information about things: these are two information systems that are very different in nature, but which logically integrate with each other. They must be integrated but not confused. As a general rule, what in itself tells us that this constitutes a deficiency is that: in the companies of which we are talking, information about things is confused with information about the use of human resources and the consequences that they derive from their decisions.
4- The fifth deficiency that we want to comment on is a result of the previous one and, in turn, generates the following deficiency: By confusing information about people with information about things, undue emphasis is placed on balances, as suppliers of information on the patrimony and on the results. Every day, these companies know how much customers owe, how much is owed to suppliers, what the availabilities are and what the inventory is approximately. Sales prices are set, you have fairly good estimates of costs, and a determination of industrial and post-industrial fixed costs can be easily made. But instead of handling this information on a daily basis, it is put aside and insisted that, without balance sheets, good decisions cannot be made.What is partially true is not totally true.
Let us remember that one of the premises of management information systems is the following: "if the information available is limited, it should be considered sufficient."
5- By putting excessive emphasis on the information that arises from the company's accounting, we find that we want to have information that is very difficult to obtain when it is necessary. It is a common phrase that accounting is never up to date. It is an area permanently in "stress", a totally unfavorable circumstance to allow it to increase its efficiency. "Management information systems include many of the contents of management accounting, however, the support systems that provide users with access to models and data, go beyond the scope of traditional management accounting" 4
6- Information systems require a concentrating center that orders the time and pace of the data, its content and recipients, so that it is both the disseminator and the monitor of the information. This structure is the "only" possible if we want to keep a management information system in place programmatically and systematically. But this concept is usually lacking. This lack, by itself, prevents the existence of an adequate management information system. "A management information system has the main objective of giving support or support to the middle and upper levels of organizations to improve the quality of the decision-making process" 5
7- There is a fact that we all know: When a person joins a Company, there are no doubts about the position they will occupy. The same is not true of your future promotions. As we know, the development of human resources is the social responsibility of the employer. For everything related to information systems, which in essence means the same as saying for everything related to decisions that make the management of the company, it is necessary to train those responsible. But, in general, "manager training as a standard work method" does not exist, except in large multinational companies.
The importance of this lack is fundamental. Executive development is a joint task that leaders, bosses and managers should undertake as a normal function. Not taking it into consideration is a deficiency that produces negative effects in the medium and short term.
8- It is a logical consequence of all the previous shortcomings, the last and most serious: the lack of support from the company management to make decisions. The leader handles himself as in the nineteenth century: paper, pencil and memory. That is, without an information system that prevents you from making mediocre or wrong decisions. “On many occasions it has been the case that a manager needs to gather information on a certain topic in a short time and nobody can provide it or they give him a list of 200 pages that he does not have time to analyze, or they tell him that it would take several days to get it ”.6
III.- THE THREE CONDITIONS THAT DETERMINE THE NEED FOR AN INFORMATION SYSTEM.
The deficiencies mentioned above can be summarized as follows: there are three elements in companies that make the need for a management information system: size, technology and uncertainty.
iii.a) Size of the Company
If the size of the company is "I am the company," no system is justified; Nor if the company is small enough to "see it all, every day." Let's not forget that information is an ideological way of representing concrete and physical realities. If the size is so small that I see and count these physical and concrete realities every day, I don't have to replace them with a symbolic representation.
iii.b) Technology
If the technology does not exist, or its degree is negligible, an information system is not justified. It cannot be installed, to give an exaggerated example, in a craftsman's workshop, in which each of them makes a different piece, with the material that occurs to him, in the time that he himself, and no other, considers enough, working with a tool with which he is skilled, to make a work whose value will be fixed when it is finished and whenever it interests a client, whose status as such is unknown in advance.
iii.c) Uncertainty
There must also be the existence of what we call "uncertainty." We thus qualify the fact that the probability of an event occurring can only be determined a priori with varying margins of error. If the margin of error is to be minimized, it is necessary to obtain fast information on what is happening daily, in order to convert "uncertainty into a" controlled uncertainty.
We call "control" an information system that allows decisions to be made, therefore, the more information can be obtained about something that is uncertain, the better the decisions will be, thus reducing the degree of uncertainty, or what is the same, have it under control. For example, if when I leave my house I do not read the weather forecast, I will make worse decisions than if I read it about a fact: whether I should go out with an umbrella or without it.
We are then faced with three variables: size, technology and uncertainty (of course, the latter can be internal or specific to the company, or external, as it corresponds to its environment.
IV.- PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES
Aware of the existence of three variables mentioned above, and assuming the reality of the deficiencies mentioned, we can examine three certain facts, with definite consequences for each one:
iv.a) Degradation of information
The first thing that is noticed in almost all medium-sized companies, and in many large companies, is an "information degradation." or lack of relevance of it. Information systems are not placed at the level of importance or degree that corresponds. They are placed at a lower level than reality demands.
This lack of importance of the information, as a fact, produces several consequences:
1.- Mediocre or wrong decisions;
2.- Inadequate use of resources, or what is the same, not allocating them properly or using them well (minimizing waste);
3.- Inefficiency, that is, not achieving business objectives; This occurs as a consequence of the lack of definition and quantification of objectives; and
4.- Inefficiency or lack of relationship between what is consumed and what is produced; higher costs, with all its economic and social consequences.
iv.b) Lack of planning
The second fact is the lack of planning. When you plan something, it is done by strangulation, because the situation is so critical that you have the rope around your neck. Throttling planning produces three negative consequences:
1.- An operational inconsistency; those responsible for areas and departments work without knowing what the other is doing; there is no assumption of a reality: that the company is a unit, a totality and not a set of separate areas; Irrational antagonisms are frequent, such as the opposition between the commercial area and the production area or both with the administration, as if the company were the playground for egos and personal satisfactions and not an entity in itself, with its functions, their socio-economic obligations and their system of needs and rewards;
2.- As a forced result of the above, an anxiety and a «managerial stress», which on certain occasions can become ill; and
3.- An inappropriate use of people's talent. Improvisation is not a good system to take advantage of the intelligence of the members of a company; The lack of planning leads to the waste of the most scarce and expensive, which is precisely the talent of all who can contribute it, but from whom nothing is asked due to lack of time, since improvisation takes it away, while planning demands.
iv.c) Resistance to change
The third fact is resistance to change more intense than normal. There is always resistance to change, but whoever owns the information can know if the change is relevant or not, if it has or lacks value, if it will contribute or not in its daily role, if it is useful or meaningless. With the change the known is replaced by ambiguity and uncertainty. Employees of organizations face the same uncertainty when, for example, quantitative quality control methods are introduced in manufacturing plants, based on sophisticated statistical techniques, many quality control inspectors have to learn to use new methods and this creates fear of not being able to achieve it. ”7 Resistance to change produces four negative consequences:
a) An irrational and systematic rejection of everything that is not well understood: the management of the company weakens, lags behind; we finally come to memory, pencil and paper, finally to the 19th century;
b) A weakened creativity; If there is energy in the company, the desire to do things, but there is no information, it cannot be created; the process of creation is achieved with information that man potentiates; if I don't know if I spend a lot, I can't create things to spend less; If I don't know what the market wants and the consumer buys, I can't create the product that will be successful in the sale, so on;
c) Objectives are missed; a lot of effort is put into selling products and services, instead of increasingly penetrating the market; and what makes the company strong is its capacity for innovation, creation and service; market penetration is the product of a continuous effort of creation, innovation and customer service; It can only be achieved thanks to good information systems: not only on technology, but on the appetite and needs of the people, both those outside the company and within it; and
d) Repeating a little what was stated above, we will say that resistance to change is, in essence, an attitude of defense against a reaction that exists and one refuses to accept it as such; In itself, it is resistance to change due to ignorance, because one lacks information is not a healthy attitude, but an unhealthy one; It is an attack against organizational health, because the one who resists change does so when he plays a role in the company, when he has the responsibility of playing a role in leadership; resistance to change as an unhealthy attitude occurs within the business organization and not in the house where the resisting person lives; it is, in short, an attack against organizational health.
V.- WHAT SHOULD BE DONE AND POSSIBLE WAY OF DOING IT
Management information systems are an irreversible need to improve the quality of decisions. If medium-sized companies in general and a significant number of large companies lack them, we must consider that it will not be for long. With five, ten or fifteen years of regression, they will become aware of their need, they will assume the reality of their shortcomings, they will diminish their prejudices and they will arrive at what they need: bring good information; integrated, at the driving level; use planning as a daily instrument of direction and change, as time demands it: "if we want everything to remain the same, many things must change" (Count of Lampedusa: "El Gato Pardo").
Running a company using management information systems is itself a concept. Organizing a management information system is to put this concept into practice, to empirical reality. We deduce from it that if the concept is wrong, the system we organize will not work. We must inevitably discuss the point until we agree "what is the valid concept." We have found that there are three concepts; of these we reject two and "accept the third."
We accept as valid without any doubt a third concept; "The one of concerted management". Concerted management involves an acceptance of reality as it is. For example: that the management of a company is a group task, which makes sense if everyone agrees to collaborate with each other, as long as defined and quantified objectives are set. That a manager is qualified as good not because of his sympathy, his kinship or his affiliation to a particular club, but because he achieves goals for which he has agreed and obtains them as part of a joint and concerted effort.
Concerted management accepts other realities: the existence of a given size and technologies and the need, not to predict the future or to handle a crystal ball, but to reduce the degree of uncertainty that is part of living reality.
The concerted management system is the concept that we intimately accept to organize, because it corresponds to what we think can be used for the company and its management team. But here is that to arrive at a concerted management system, information is needed; This must be achieved by meeting three conditions.
Management control is a means of collecting information that allows a business to be directed towards the established objectives, formulating plans and controlling key decisions for its expansion.
Management control systems are mechanisms that management uses to exercise its leading role and enable the organization to meet its objectives in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.
A good management control or management control system takes into account the behavior of those who will use it to achieve the achievement of institutional objectives.
It is not intended to find degrees of guilt nor does it have auditing purposes, but rather to allow all the dependencies of an organization to meet their partial objectives to allow the achievement of the total or general objectives.
It is not possible for one part of the business to succeed and the rest to fail. The management has a single general objective and the achievement of this is like the destiny of a ship, it is not that one part of the plane has a destination and the rest of the ship another diametrically opposite; The entire ship arrives at the same destination even when some passengers descend and others board the ship at an intermediate stage.
To select a control system, it is convenient to ask yourself: How does it promote the achievement of the goals? Also if there is congruence, this is when everyone is going towards the same goal.
Control systems have the characteristic that they can be formal in nature with explicit rules, procedures and plans that guide behavior such as cost, income and utility systems, human resource systems, quality systems, etc., but Other systems of an informal nature also coexist that include shared values such as loyalty, the personal values of the managers and finally all those unwritten norms that form the culture of the organization and that are sometimes neglected by managers who erroneously assume that by having the power, by magic they acquired reason and admit no argument to the contrary.
There is thus the risk of losing clients because it is not perceived that there is deterioration in the institutional image by assuming that some things work well and it goes to extremes of denying the criticisms of the junior staff and considering them simply as impertinent or conflicting because they dare to disagree with authority.
This problem occurs not only in private companies but in all organizations where managers do not have a system that informs them about their primary objective, which is to satisfy their customers.
The control systems start in a process of setting objectives and making decisions that correspond to a planning function that is vital, since it is what allows a pattern of comparison to be established to determine whether it is on the right track.
In this way, exercising control supposes an operation by which management intends to meet its objectives by comparing the results obtained with those expected and is in a position to take the most appropriate corrective actions.
This control is especially important in the measures that are aimed at customer satisfaction through the loyalty of old ones and the incorporation of new customers and from there to estimate the profitability of the measures adopted to achieve it, with actions that measure that satisfaction. For example, something as simple as acting as a client to verify the attention they receive from all the personnel who have contact with them, from the doorman or the telephone operator to the salespeople, cashiers and dispatchers.
VI.- CONDITIONS TO BE FULFILLED BY AN INFORMATION SYSTEM
vi.1) Information about things up to date
The first condition is to have all the administrative and accounting data up to date; information on production, sales, billing, collections, personnel, inventories, resources, commitments, etc. must be up to date; the information that corresponds to things must be up to date. This is the first and mandatory implementation sequence. If we have this information up to date, we can implement the information that corresponds to the operational areas and keep it up to date. Fundamentally, this is information in volumes, in units, rather than in values.
vi.2) Information on people up to date
The second condition is to have the information that corresponds to people. With this information up to date, the manager or person in charge of the area knows what happens to him and what happens to others. Know what is happening to everyone.
Once this second condition is fulfilled, we can project ourselves into the future. The previous two stages are basically events of the past. They report what happened. But they do not report what happened compared to our intentions about what should happen.
vi.3) Budget Planning and Control
And here is that in our world everything that lives is of possible experience when compared: the notion of fast is born from another in which the slow is made aware; what is black compared to what is white or yellow, what is light with an arbitrary measure of what is heavy and then a new circumstance occurs. The driving team is managed in the first stage with data that correspond to the company as a whole, but to yesterday, For example: it takes the last balance (which is from yesterday) and compares it with the balance (which is from yesterday) from the previous year, (which corresponds to an even more remote past).
In the second stage, it takes the information not only about the company, but about the people: commercial management, personnel management, production management, etc., and compares the sale of yesterday, with that of last month, last year, etc.., and so it does with everything.
Once the second stage has been completed, the group in charge of conducting it will face a new reality: that the historical comparison is useful and valid, but incomplete. Once the second stage has been completed, you can take advantage of a third: planning the future and then comparing what was planned with what was executed. In its intimate structure, the management team "accepts and agrees" to compare "its own projection" with "its own execution."
Then the planning is assigned to people and receives, only then, the name of budget; The comparison is methodized with scheduled periodicity and from this process the "budget control" is born.
VII.- THE INSTRUMENTS OF MANAGEMENT CONTROL
With the development of society and production systems influenced by technical scientific development and industrial revolutions, the way of facing objective situations has required a greater depth of analysis and concepts to assume functions or play specific roles and maintain at least one level of competition that allows survival. Derived from this process, ideas and terms arise such as management and everything it represents.
Management is characterized by a broader vision of the real possibilities of an organization to solve a certain situation or reach a certain goal. It can be assumed, as the “disposition and organization of the resources of an individual or group to obtain the expected results” 8 It could be generalized as a way of aligning the efforts and resources to achieve a determined end.
Management systems have had to be modified to respond to the extraordinary complexity of the organizational systems that have been adopted, as well as the way in which the behavior of the environment has been modifying the way in which it affects organizations.
According to Amat, 9 until 1973 the companies kept a calm look on their future, from that moment the situation changed (in particular due to the oil crisis and global inflation), and our society and the economy have not stopped changing since then. private and governmental business activity has had to learn to adapt continuously.
From the 90s, the future-oriented management control began to take more relevance as a concept, integrating concepts such as: strategy, customers and competition, becoming a tool that allows managing rather than controlling.
In order to define, therefore, what has been called "Management Control", it would be essential to merge the above with a whole group of considerations and corresponding analysis on control.
Throughout this development, control has been reinforcing a series of stages that characterize it as a process in which organizations must define information and make it flow and interpret it according to their needs to make decisions.
The classic control process consists of a series of elements that are:
a) Establishment of measurement criteria, or standards, for both actual and desired performance. This happens by setting what the objectives are and quantifying them; for determining the critical areas of the organization's activity related to the actions necessary to achieve the objectives and for the establishment of quantitative criteria for evaluating the actions in such areas and their repercussions on the objectives set
b) Establishment of the procedures for comparing the results achieved with respect to those desired.
c) Analysis of the causes of deviations and subsequent proposal of corrective actions. "
The main limitation of this approach to control is that corrective actions will be taken once the deviation has occurred (a posteriori), due to the fact that they are not previously informed and prepared to avoid the possible deviation. It also presents other limitations that make it ineffective in the face of the specific needs of the organization, which require a more detailed analysis, in terms of its relationship with the environment, characteristics of the organization, systemic nature and assessment of qualitative aspects which will be called in hereinafter non-formal control factors.
We can speak, then, of a Control System, as a set of actions, functions, means and managers that guarantee, through their interaction, to know the situation of an aspect or function of the organization at a given time and make decisions to react to she.
Control systems (Menguzzato and Renau. 1986, p. 245.) must meet a series of requirements for their efficient operation:
- Be understandable Follow the form of organization Fast Economical
A control system to be effective must meet the following characteristics:
a) Integrated to Planning; It is at this stage of the administrative process where objectives, goals and strategies are determined. In a second step, the indicators that are variables are determined with which the performance of the people will be measured.
“The control system must be supported on the basis of the needs, objectives and goals that the organization draws. These goals can be assumed as the objectives that the organization has set out to achieve and that ultimately determine its reason for being. "
The fact that the control system is defined and guided by the strategic objectives of an organization, gives it an eminently strategic character, since it will be designed to control the behavior of the different parts of the system based on the fulfillment of those objectives and at the same time will provide information for strategic decision making.
“Each objective must be duly shaped and adjusted to the characteristics of the environment and the objective and subjective needs of the organization. Monitoring the evolution of the environment allows us to react, and readjust if necessary, the way in which these proposed goals will be achieved and even partially or totally rethink them ”. 10
The future cannot be foreseen in the terms in which we have understood it until now, but it is necessary to invent it. We will never get out of what we are, personally and organizationally, if we do not envision, at least as an image, what we want to be and work and fight for it. Hence the fundamental importance of planning and the effective determination of strategic objectives.
b) Flexibility: Change is a variable that is present with increasing intensity, affecting organizations, and they must adapt to changes in the external and internal environment, such as technological, economic, political, cultural changes, which affect the productive and administrative processes. In this way also the control systems must be flexible enough to adapt to changes.
c) Accurate: The precision of the control will depend on the information that is used, if it is not reliable and precise it could lead to wrong decisions that could lead to major failures and harm the organization.
d) Timely: The timing of the control must be adapted to the type of task, activity or function to be controlled. Thus, for example, a function of cashier, treasurer, will have a different frequency and control opportunity than that of a winemaker where inputs for production are stored, or inventories of furniture and equipment. The timing of the control will depend: if the situation is characterized by greater uncertainty, then more frequent measurements will be required, on the contrary, if it is more predictable, they will be more sporadic.
A control system with a strategic focus must be able to measure the degree of compliance with these objectives.
Therefore, it is necessary to identify a group of quantitative and qualitative indicators that express the level and quality of compliance with each objective.
Below are some of the contributions that have been made to control systems in the organizational world.
According to Gerry Johnson and Kevan Acholes (1997, p. 264.): “… managers often have a very limited vision of what the managerial control of a strategic context consists of.” 11
Both consider control systems in two broad categories:
- Information and measurement systems: financial systems, indicators, etc., systems that regulate people's behavior.
Other authors establish moments through which any control system must pass.
For Harold Koontz and Heinz Weihroh (1994, p. 128), any control system must go through these three stages:
- "Establishment of standards and critical points. Performance measurement. Correction of deviations" 12
This rationale is very similar in general to the classical concept of control. Both concepts defend and support the following:
The establishment of standards and critical points allows the management to direct itself directly on indicators that inform it about the situation (a priori or a posteriori) of the organization. Plans make it easy to compare with what has been achieved, but they go against innovation.
At this point, the determination of the objectives that the organization sets for its improvement is included, but the little flexibility in most cases only allows them to survive.
On the basis of these indicators, the behavior of the components of the organization can be quantitatively measured, which is defined as performance measurement and evaluation.
It is considered that the performance evaluation should be done with a multidimensional approach, and be measured through criteria such as stability, efficiency, effectiveness and value improvement, for which, if normed or planned standards are taken as a reference, they will express the level of Effectiveness and if the competition is taken as a starting point, then they will express the level of competitiveness of the organization. It is not enough to determine the criteria to make a correct performance evaluation, it also requires a harmonious interaction between objectives, strategies, indicators. This allows for qualitative analysis and to do so based on global objectives and local processes to make possible the analysis of the root causes of the level of performance achieved by the organization in general.
After the comparison between the indicators and the real one, the causes of the deviations are analyzed and measures are taken to correct the behavior, which in flexible organizations that are open to change, could even imply reorienting the direction of management.
For Menguzzato and Renau there is a group of variables that collect all the information necessary to set the expected value and compare it with the output of the system.
- “Essential variables: of great importance in the operation of the system and are linked (or even represent) to the objectives of the system. Action variables: they can be manipulated by another system or by an operator and their mission is to regulate the operation of the system. 13
All these ideas are crystallized in control systems designed depending on the organizational culture or the characteristics of the environment, social object or simply its needs.
vii.1) Management control.
The conditions in which there is currently competition for access to the necessary resources, to reduce expenses and costs, to increase the quality of products and services, and the colossal development of communications and transport, have modified the way of acting and interact of organizations. The management processes have evolved, in the same way, to a superior system.
These and other factors make the classic concept of control just a query item. The current Management Control is an example of this.
At the beginning (1978), Management Control was considered as a series of techniques such as internal control, cost control, internal and external audits, analysis of ratios and balance points, but budgetary control constituted and still for some constitute the fundamental element of management.
The ambiguity of this concept is due to the fact that it has been subjected to many modifications typical of its evolution, with the aim of providing elements that separate it "from its essentially short-term accounting aspect." 14
Anthony R. (1987, p. 168.) rightly considers it “as a process by which managers ensure the obtaining of resources and their effective and efficient use in the fulfillment of the organization's objectives15
Note that in these cases, Management Accounting is just another available control mechanism.
The management control system is designed to help the different decision levels to coordinate actions, in order to achieve the maintenance, performance and evolution objectives, set at different deadlines, specifying that if the accounting data is still important, it is far from having the almost exclusive character that is granted to it in many management control systems.
For Joan Ma. Amat (1992, p. 35), Management Control is: «the set of mechanisms that management can use that increase the probability that the behavior of the people who are part of the Organization is coherent with the objectives of this. »16
This concept proposes a new dimension of management control, since they not only focus on the accounting and short-term nature of this, but also recognize the existence of other non-financial factors and indicators that influence the process of value creation, either in products or services, and are focused on the basis of the existence of proposed objectives to be achieved.
It incorporates a periodic balance of Weaknesses and Strengths, a comparative and inter-organization analysis, the use of the Scorecard as a control mechanism and information flow.
Another philosophy for improving the management system is aimed at highlighting the interrelationships between human processes and the control system, using non-formal control factors, which have become very important in recent years.
Despite this development, a set of Management Control limitations can still be identified, among which we can mention:
- About what should be the content of a management control system.
- The complexity of the organization and its environment is not reflected in the complexity of the management control system. Control does not establish a relationship between the evaluation of plans and budget and the evaluation of the strategies that may become obsolete since, given the turbulence of the environment, the frame of reference in which the plans and budgets are inscribed is not unalterable.
- Bear in mind that a control geared towards short-term results can compromise long-term competitiveness That it is important to have a double budget (one strategic and one operational) That the approach must be anticipatory, due to the turbulent environment.
This is how the most recent designs of Management Control processes and systems are characterized by five aspects, which take up the previous control processes because they are derived from them.
The management control process, therefore, starting from the classic definition of control, taking up criteria from other authors and adjusted to the current information management needs and adding non-formal control elements, could be considered in five points:
- Conjunto de indicadores de control que permitan orientar y evaluar posteriormente el aporte de cada departamento a las variables claves de la organización.Modelo predictivo que permita estimar (a priori) el resultado de la actividad que se espera que realice cada responsable y/o unidad.Objetivos ligados a indicadores y a la estrategia de la organización.Información sobre el comportamiento y resultado de la actuación de los diferentes departamentos.Evaluación del comportamiento y del resultado de cada persona y/o departamento que permita la toma de decisiones correctivas.
For Amat, “depending on the combination of mechanisms that an organization uses to adapt to the environment and facilitate internal control, four types of control systems can be considered: Family (or Clan), Bureaucratic (or formalization of behavior), by Results (or market) and Ad-hoc (or Network). ”17 Many authors tend to associate control by results with management control. The fact that, due to its characteristics, many organizations do not use this system but another does not imply that they do not carry out management control.
The preference for one system or another will be influenced by the size of the organization, the degree of centralization of decisions, the possibility of formalizing the activity, the personal and cultural characteristics of the organization and the behavior and characteristics of the environment.
The greater the centralization, the less the need to use formalized control mechanisms to facilitate the decision process. As the organization grows, it will be necessary to specify the procedures for delegating tasks to lower levels.
As centralization diminishes, the more necessary it will be to have a formalized control system. On the other hand, as the interdependence between organizational units is higher, either through formal or informal mechanisms, the importance and need for a formalized system, and in particular, for management accounting as a control system, is reduced.
The management control process is based, therefore, on control mechanisms related to both quantifiable aspects, derived from a budget or a plan, based on set objectives and on specific control systems such as internal control, quality control, etc..; as well as aspects related to individual and interpersonal behavior. These mechanisms are differentiated and treated as formal mechanisms (strategic planning, organizational structure, management accounting) and non-formal control mechanisms (psychosocial mechanisms that promote self-control and cultural ones that promote identification).
vii.2) The strategy and structure of the organization as starting points for the operation of strategic control systems for management.
To adapt their internal functioning to the demands of the environment, organizations define their organizational policy in the most convenient way, to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the environment and according to their capabilities and resources, maintain their competitiveness (business strategy) for what which its elements are structured and coordinated in a certain way (organizational structure).
Luis Gaj (1993, p. 18.) offers an appreciation from the point of view of several renowned scholars on the subject of strategy.
Henry Mintzberg defines strategy as: “a way of thinking about the future, integrated into the decision-making process; a formalized and articulating process of results, a form of programming. ”18
To this, Snynder and Gluck, add that the strategic task is mainly planning as a way of seeing the whole before seeing its parts.
Igor Ansoff, for his part, explains the strategy in: where, when, how and with whom the company will do its business.
The strategy applies equally to large or small organizations, those for profit or that have a state and budgeted nature.
Another conception places strategy as an instrument for managing organizations, not necessarily a plan, but rather a mature behavior to keep the organization in balance with its environment, knowing and using available resources.
All these ways of seeing the strategy are here separated in order to facilitate the understanding of relevant aspects, however, they can be mixed providing what could be called a conscious posture of situational adaptation to changes in the environment, having a common aspect that is the futurity of current decisions, although it is not synonymous with success, which means that it requires additional ingredients that make it an instrument to avoid failure caused by technological or knowledge obsolescence and environmental inadequacy.
As might be expected, there is a close relationship between strategy and structure, which is produced by an interdependence, since if to implement a strategy successfully it is assumed that the structure must adapt to it, then any existing structure will influence, to a great extent. measure, in the strategy to be designed; In other words, the strategy is a product influenced by the pre-existing structure that in turn generates a new structure.
For all the above, the design of a control system for the management of an organization must be consistent with its strategy and structure, as formal aspects as well as with non-formal aspects that are part of the management process. This will be able to guarantee with a greater probability, that the operation and the results obtained from the decisions taken are related and consistent with the organization's objectives. Hence, the management control systems that are designed must be linked to the formulation of the organization's strategy, to the design of its structure and to the non-formal aspects linked to the management styles and methods that allow adequate decision-making processes. decisions and the identity that is achieved in the organization,assimilating instruments and mechanisms that allow it to overcome the limitations that as a control system does not allow it to fulfill its function with efficiency and effectiveness.
Due to the fact that an effective control system must be designed based on the strategy and structure, the formulation of organizational objectives linked to the strategy is the starting point of the control process.
The type of strategy (leadership, costs, etc.) and structure (centralized or decentralized, functional, etc.) that an organization has determine the characteristics of a control system.
The adaptation of accounting systems to the needs of strategic information can facilitate decision-making by allowing the quantification and selection of the different strategic variants.
The control system must be designed on the basis of the type of strategy to which the organization is oriented.
On the other hand, financial planning must be integrated with the long-term strategy, so that the annual budgets will be a reflection of it and will allow to guide both the action of the responsibility centers and the evaluation of the performance of the different managers.
As previously stated, the key variables are aspects of decisive importance in the internal and external functioning of any organization. They aim at certain parameters, which are conceived through or based on them and guarantee, in their correct achievement, to keep the internal and external functioning of the organization in balance, so the control process should focus on them. Thus, for example, competition is not a key variable, but the selling price, the service or the quality with which the products are offered are.
"Key variable is understood as those areas or activities that, if carried out well, guarantee the success of a unit and therefore the achievement of its objectives." 19
The ability to select these critical control points is one of the management skills, since adequate control depends on it. In this connection, managers need to ask themselves questions like these: What will best reflect the goals of my department? What will it show me best when these goals are not met? What will best measure critical deviations? What will tell me who is responsible for any failure? What standards will cost less? For what standards is the information available financially?
The definition of the key variables facilitates the design of the control indicator system and its measurement.
It is very important that these indicators are financial (sales, profit margin, indebtedness, treasury) and non-financial (market share, customer loyalty, initiative, creativity, external image of the organization, etc.) so that they can represent the maximum the characteristics and particularities of the process.
The monitoring of the indicators is usually carried out through a tool known as the Scorecard.
vii.3) Control systems for strategic, efficient and effective management.
From all that has been raised so far, it can be inferred that the control systems to guarantee a truly efficient and effective management must have a group of characteristics that detach it from its purely accounting and operational nature.
Ma. Isabel González (1999, p. 29.), defines efficiency as a “… simple relationship, between the inputs and outputs of a system” 20; Magnitudes such as productivity are representative from this point of view. Other authors associate efficiency with reaching their objectives by optimizing the use of their inputs. This point of view obliges the former to consider that the output is adjusted to schedule and therefore the organization is at the same time effective.
Menguzzato and Renau (1986, p. 35) associate efficiency to the relationship between assigned resources and results obtained, and effectiveness to the relationship between results obtained and desired results.
If these observations are adjusted to the system, it is necessary to focus on how to achieve efficiency and effectiveness, not in management but in the process of controlling that management itself.
Precisely, in the aspects proposed to overcome the limitations of management control, there will be the way to reach certain levels of effectiveness in the process by having a systemic nature, a strategic approach, and not only reaching the formal aspects but also offering significant weight to non-formal aspects of control. That is why the system must propose the use of the different aspects that complete a control system so that it can truly measure the efficiency and effectiveness of management.
The aspects proposed to give the system efficient and effective measurement means of management will be linked to the non-formal aspects of control and scorecards, assuming, as is evident, the prior existence of the formal aspects of control.
Starting from the base of effective objectives, predefined for a certain period and that contemplate a real challenge for the organization, and the proposed paths to reach that planned future, the control system must be based on a defined structure for:
- Grouping under a criterion of similarity in their functions to departments that participate directly in the fundamental activity Group or differentiate other departments that serve as direct support to the fundamental activity Departments or responsibility centers that participate directly in other activities that are contemplated in the global goals. These centers may or may not be part of those of the fundamental activity.
These elements will guarantee a level of decentralization that, as has been described, will need a more formalized control, but this process will depend to a large extent on the degree of formalization that the fundamental activity allows.
vii.4) Non-formal aspects of control.
By defining individual objectives, hierarchically subsequent phase to the definition of the overall objectives of the organization, the process will be focusing on the control of the individual activity of each department and how it is influencing the overall objectives of the organization. This gives the department the freedom to program its own control system, adapted, of course, to the central system. It is necessary to remember that due to their characteristics, the terms area, center and department are used interchangeably here.
The previous analysis demonstrates the importance of the organizational culture and the integration and motivation of the personnel as non-formal factors of control, for the effectiveness in the process. Management and control systems as well as individual and organizational behavior are largely an expression of the organizational culture and are the result of the interaction within the organization of different people and groups presenting different beliefs, values and expectations..
Another aspect linked to human behavior is related to the incentives that must be associated with a good or bad result. A financial control system can promote behavior contrary to what is desired if it is not adapted to the people who are part of the organization and their needs.
The individual behaviorIt will be related to the characteristics of its design (types of control indicators that are used, types of incentives with which the result is rewarded or sanctioned, characteristics of the information system), the way in which it is implemented (consideration of personal expectations in the new design, management commitment in the new system, performance of those responsible for the implementation with the affected people) or the style with which the system is used (flexibility to carry out planning or evaluation, rigidity to limit the behavior individual to the system, pressure for compliance, participation in the planning and evaluation process, incentives for autonomy). The figure shows the relationship and place of each of these non-formal factors in the process ofmanagement.
Once the control attention points, key variables, critical points, global and particular indicators have been established, it is necessary, in order to efficiently measure the operation of the control system, the use of a tool that is capable of collecting all the information available, rank it, certify it and offer it to management for decision-making.
Currently, there are several tools that, depending on the characteristics of the activity, the organizational structure and the means available to the organization, may be preferred to a greater or lesser extent.
A tool that is being widely defended and disseminated in the world of management controls are the Dashboards.
vii.5) Dashboards
The need to make changes in approaches that will help improve productivity, and to monitor the factors that determine business competitiveness (quality, customer service, fast deliveries, etc.), as well as systems that manage to motivate staff and evaluate their achievements.
On the other hand, traditional cost information does not reflect the profound changes in the economic environment and the company's own framework; problems such as: the diversification of markets, technological development, the shortening of the life cycles of products, easily traceable cost relevance losses in products, quality, delivery time, customer service. Achieving all this means going beyond the pure accounting field, and the information system must include the monitoring and analysis of these variables, which are the basis of the business results.
Also, technical advances in the industry, including automation, have led to changes in the cost structure. If traditionally for cost management the direct costs located in the product were significant, nowadays service activities and production support are increasingly occupying relative weight.
A control instrument known as "The Balanced Scorecard" appears in the 1980s, which is a method of obtaining and classifying information generated by management control systems, which is based on the determination of market-based costs (to base product and process design), to the implementation of activity-based costing and management systems ”21.
On the other hand, the control and analysis of costs by their nature (materials, labor, amortization, etc.), are of little use in the administration of the processes because this approach covers, without making differences, all the costs that concur in every activity and process. It is moving away from traditional cost systems, Modern management control facilitates information from the internal and external perspective for the resource allocation process, helping to discover and assess the opportunities and risks of the environment, as well as the weak points and strong company.
The company has to be analyzed from the outside, taking into account the competition and the customer, which leads to a permanent test, where competition is the main characteristic. Indices of a financial nature such as return on investment (ROl), profit and liquidity are valid indicators of achievement or performance with respect to the overall management of an organization, but they focus on the final result. However, the company also needs to focus its attention on the technical, organizational and motivational factors, which underlie and determine the overall performance of the organization. These are the operational indicators of business management. Only if it is possible to show the functional relationships that link local decisions with global results, is it that of the company,It will be achieved that the operational indicators are really constituted in valid instruments of guidance in the management and business decision making.
In the traditional approach, reports rich in indicators and figures have come to be seen as the goal and end product of the management control activity. Modern management control encourages action, does not stay in a document, and alerts the manager to the critical aspects of the business to achieve success. At present, different degrees of application of computer technology to management control systems (Management Control System) are observed in all companies, from computer programs to solve isolated tasks to large integrated management systems. In traditional systems, conditions and processes are checked to see if they ran as planned by checking expenses and income. Management control must be belligerent,engine of organizational behavior changes in the company in a certain sense, in accordance with the strategy pursued. Belligerence is achieved by following the following rules: Neutral information does not alter the organization; it just generates a sea of data that distracts the manager away from critical problems and key managerial responses.
The information should focus on the particular objectives of the current strategy in the company in relation to the restrictions that govern and determine the level of performance of the organization.
The belligerent information must actively follow the improvement projects that are executed in the company (flexibility requirement to keep the information systems updated) and allow evaluating the impact that a measure of improvement of an area may have on the organization.
Each area or subsystem of the control scope must be endowed with functions that define a key and integrating objective and design an information system that is related to that objective.
The traditional management control uses a systematized information system based on accounting, due to the advantage of the homogeneity offered by the monetary measures, and it is fundamentally oriented to report on the results of the company to the higher organisms, and to the shareholders, among others. But the company also requires specific information, also called operational information, to follow up on the key factors of its management. The search for a sustainable competitive advantage for the company, as a basis for maintaining itself in turbulent markets, shows how insufficient the traditional functional or departmental management control systems are, focused on maximizing internal efficiency;given that competitive advantage cannot be understood by seeing the company as a set of structural subdivisions, but rather as a set of processes involved in giving a strategic result.
A series of general characteristics that management control must possess are also recognized, such as:
- Comprehensive, assumes a comprehensive perspective of the organization, contemplates the company as a whole, that is, it covers all aspects of the activities that take place in it. Newspaper, follows a predetermined scheme and sequence Selective, should focus only on those Relevant elements for the function or objectives of each unit Creative, continuous search for significant indexes to better understand the reality of the company and direct it towards its objectives Effective and efficient, it seeks to achieve the objectives set using the appropriate resources Adequate, control must be According to the controlled function, seeking the most suitable techniques and criteria Adapted to the culture of the company and the people who are part of it. Motivator, it must contribute to motivate towards the desired behavior rather than to coerce.Serve as a bridge between strategy and action, as a means of deploying strategy in the company. Flexible, easily modifiable, capable of change.
One of the management control tools that emerged at the beginning of the nineties was the Balanced Scorecard, this has the particularity of comprehensive, under four perspectives, both financial and non-financial, providing key management indicators.
vii.6) Balanced Scorecard
Sometimes it is argued that the fundamental characteristic of the Balanced Scorecard, hereinafter CMI, is the combination of financial and non-financial indicators.
This is certainly an important feature, but not the most relevant one. Already at the beginning of this century engineers at innovative companies had developed dashboards that combined financial and non-financial indicators. Such a narrow definition would undoubtedly deserve an unfavorable opinion. If this were the case, the CMI would only be a new name for something that already exists. Something that has existed since the origins of business management and administration. A hundred-year-old idea.
During the sixties - especially in France - it became fashionable to use a tool called Tableau de Bord22. The dashboard incorporated in a document various ratios for the financial control of the company. With the passage of time, this tool has evolved and combines not only financial ratios, but also non-financial indicators that allow controlling the different business processes. The idea of using a set of indicators to obtain management information is a precedent collected by the CMI.
In the United States, also in the 1960s, General Electric developed a dashboard to monitor the company's processes. Using eight key results areas, which included topics such as profitability, market share, training or public responsibility, General Electric defined indicators to monitor and control the achievement of both short and long-term objectives.
The CMI also includes the idea of using indicators that monitor the strategy of a company. In conclusion, we could point out that the current CMI collects ideas that already existed around the concept of the control panel. This is a tool that allows translating the Vision of the organization, expressed through its strategy, into specific terms and objectives for its dissemination at all levels, establishing a system for measuring the achievement of said objectives. It is known internationally as the Balanced Scorecard, even though in Spanish it is called by various words: Command Board, Control Board, Scorecard, Balanced Scorecard, Balanced Measurement System1023.
Although virtually all organizations use financial and non-financial metrics, many use their non-financial metrics for local improvements in their customer-facing operations. Some higher-level managers use indicators
financial statements, as if these measures could adequately summarize the results of operations carried out by your middle and lower level employees. Therefore, they are using their financial and non-financial performance indicators for tactical control of their short-term operations.
The Balanced Scorecard is an integrative vision of the company, which includes all the agents that intervene in it, linking the strategy, which in its essence is long-term, with the daily activities that are short-term.
Kaplan and Norton 24 state that:
«The Balanced Scorecard complements the financial indicators of past performance with measures of the drivers of future performance. The objectives and indicators of the Scorecard are derived from the vision and strategy of an organization; and they contemplate the performance of the organization from four perspectives: financial, customer, internal process and training and growth. "
The CMI aims to unite short-term operational control with the long-term vision and strategy of the company. In this way, the company focuses on a few fundamental indicators related to the most significant objectives. In other words, the organization is forced to control and monitor the operations of today because they affect the development of tomorrow. This means that the concept of CMI is based on three dimensions of time: yesterday, today and tomorrow.
The use of cause-effect indicators, a reflection of the company's strategy, constitute a management engine since it involves constant evaluation by the employees themselves. Initially, indicators provided by tools such as Benchmarking are used. On the other hand, a Scorecard is not exclusive of other indicators, other than those used to describe the strategy, which should not be abandoned since they are real measurements of other situations that have occurred within the organization.
The CMI emphasizes that financial and non-financial indicators should be part of the information system for employees at all levels of the organization.
Those on the front lines need to understand the financial consequences of their decisions and actions; Senior executives must understand the drivers of long-term financial success. Balanced scorecard objectives and measures are more than just a collection of financial performance indicators; they are derived from a vertical process driven by the business unit's objective and strategy. The BSC must transform the objective and strategy of a business unit into tangible objectives and indicators.
The indicators represent a balance between external indicators for shareholders and clients and internal indicators for critical business processes, innovation, training and growth. The indicators are balanced between the performance indicators - the results of past efforts - and the drivers that drive future performance. and the Scorecard is balanced between the objective and easily quantified measures of the results and the subjective, in a certain way critical, inducing the performance of the results.
The Balanced Scorecard is more than a tactical or operational measurement system. Innovative companies are using the Scorecard as a strategic management system, to manage their long-term strategy. They are using the Scorecard measurement approach to carry out critical management processes:
I.- Clarify and translate or transform the strategic vision
2.- Communicate and link the strategic objectives and indicators
3.- Plan, establish objectives and align strategic initiatives
4.- Increase feedback and strategic training.
The application of the BSC begins with the definition of the mission, vision and values of the
organization. The organization's strategy will only be consistent if those elements have been conceptualized. Otherwise it is possible to make it but they will be less sustainable over time.
A CMI relies on four perspectives these are;
- Financial Clients Internal processes Training and Growth
4 perspectives of the CMI Balanced Scorecard
a) Financial Perspective:
The financial perspective shows us financial indicators, which should summarize the economic consequences, easily measurable, of actions that have already been carried out.
Financial measures indicate whether a company's strategy, its implementation and execution, are contributing to the improvement of the acceptable minimum.
Financial targets serve as the focus for targets and indicators in all other scorecard perspectives. Each of the selected measures should be part of a link of cause and effect relationships, which culminates in the improvement of the financial situation. It is possible to expect that each business unit has different financial indicators or that if they are the same, different goals are required of them, this is a product that each business unit must be considered independently, which is part of a whole, the company, but that presents particularities, whether of products, markets or others. In addition, it must be considered that in development (life cycle), different indicators are required for each business unit, and that their goals are also different,since in a business unit that has just started, a low level of cash flow can be expected, while a return on cash flow will be required for a stage of maturity.
Some authors argue that this perspective should be called “the financial perspective of the shareholder” 25, something that has two purposes. Owners may have more specific expectations than usual for maximum performance, and in some cases they may have specific demands with environmental or social effects.
b) Internal Process Perspective:
At this stage, the critical internal processes in which the organization must be excellent must be identified, allowing the business unit:
- deliver value propositions that will attract and retain customers in selected market segments, and meet shareholders' expectations of excellent financial returns.
In this regard, it is relevant that CMI identifies processes that may or may not be implemented in the company, this being a substantial improvement in relation to a traditional approach that focuses only on existing processes.
Another relevant aspect, from the perspective of the internal process, are the indicators that can induce the creation of new processes for new clients. Thus raised, internal process indicators involve short-term aspects and also involve vision.
c) Customer perspective:
The customer and market segments in which the business unit will compete, and its action measures in those selected segments must be identified.
The perspective describes how value is created for customers, how this demand is satisfied, and why the customer agrees to pay for it. This means that the internal processes and development efforts of the company must be guided in this perspective. If the company cannot deliver the right products and services, satisfying customer needs, both in the short and long term, at an opportunity cost, no revenue will be generated and the business will decline to death. Much of the effort goes into determining how to increase and ensure customer loyalty.
d) Training and growth perspective:
This identifies the infrastructure that the company must build to create long-term growth and improvement. The formation and growth of an organization come from three main sources: people, systems and procedures. Cmi's financial, customer and internal process objectives will reveal large gaps between existing capabilities of people, systems and procedures, at the same time showing that it will be necessary to achieve a performance that represents a breakthrough.
To fill these gaps, businesses will have to invest in employee requalification, enhance systems and technology, and coordinate the organization's procedures and routines.
The perspective of training (or learning) and growth allows the company to ensure its long-term renewal capacity, a prerequisite for a lasting existence. Given that knowledge is increasingly a perishable good, it will be very important to decide what are the basic competencies that the company should cultivate as a basis for its future development. As a consequence of this strategic decision, the organization will have to determine how to obtain that knowledge that it will also need, in areas on which it has already decided that they will not be basic competencies.
Increasingly old knowledge and practices are competitive disadvantages, as companies evolve from the second industrial age into new information age portions.
_____
1 Gordon B. Davis, "Management Information Systems," edit. Mac Graw Hill, page 5
2 Ibid, page 8
3 Newman William, "Programming, organization and control" edit. Deusto, p. twenty-one
4 Gordon D. Davis, "Management Information Systems", edit. Mac. Graw Hill, p. 14
5 Daniel-martin.com.ar/sig.html
6
7 Robin S. and Coulter M., "Administration" edit. Prentice Hall, p. 386
8 Encarta Encyclopedia 1998-2000
9 Amat J., “Management control: A Management perspective”, Gestión 2000, 3rd. ed. P. 260
10 Palma A. "Directorate of Organizations", edit. Dolmen, p. 206
11 Johnson and Scholes, "Strategic Direction", Edit. Prentice Hall, p. 264
12 Koontz and Weihroh, "Elements of Administration", edit. Mc Graw Hill, p.
13 Menguzzato and Renau, Strategic Management of the Company ”, edit. Euroed, p. 374
14 Menguzzato and Renau "Strategic management of the company", edit. Euroed, p. 374
15 Ibid, p. 380
16 Amat J., "Management Control: A Management perspective", Gestión 2000, p. 35
17 Joan M. Amat, “Management Control”, Ediciones Gestión, pag. 35
18 Luis Gaj, "Strategic Administration", edit. Atica SA, pag. 18
19 Ibid., P. 113.
20 Ma. Isabel González Bravo. Control of the performance of university departments through indicators. Public Audit ”. No. 16. Feb, 1999. p. 19.
21 Kaplan R. Cooper R., “Cost and Effect. How to Use ABC, ABM and ABB to Improve Management, Processes and Profitability. Management 2000 2nd. Ed. P. 401
22 Dávila A., New control tools: IESE Former Students Magazine, p. 7
2. 3
24 Kaplan S., Norton D., "Balanced Scorecard", edit. Management 2000, page 321
25 Olve N., Roy J., and Wetter M., “Implementing and Managing: The Balanced Scorecard”. Edit. Management, p. 370
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Gordon D. "Management Information System" edit. Graw Hill, p. 5 Ibid., P. 8Newman W. "Programming, organization and control", edit. Deusto, p. 21Gordon D., "Management Information Systems", Mc. Graw Hill, p. 14 Ibid. Robin S. and Coulter M., “Administration” edit. Prentice Hall, p. 386 Encarta Encyclopedia 1998-2000Amat J., “Management control: A Management perspective”, Gestión 2000, p.260Palma A., “Management of Organizations”, edit. Dolmen, p. 206Jonson and Scholes, "Strategic Management of the company", edit. Euroed, p. 374 Koontz and Weihroh, "Elements of Management", ed., Mc Graw Hill, p. 128Menguzzato and Renau, “Strategic direction of the company”, edit. Euroed, pag.134 Menguzzato and Renau, “Strategic direction of the company”, edit. Euroed, p. 374 Ibid., P. 380Amat J., “Management control:A management perspective ”, Gestión 2000, page 35 Ibídem, page. 35Gaj L., "Strategic Administration", edit. Atica SA, pag. 18 Ibid., P. 113González MI, "Controlling the performance of university departments through indicators", Public Audit No. 16, 1999, p. 19Kaplan R. & Cooper R., “Cost and Effect. How to use ABC, ABM and ABB, to improve management, processes and profitability ", Gestión 2000, page, 401Dávila A.," New control tools "Student magazine, IESE, page Kaplan S. Norton D., "Balanced scorecard", edit. Management 2000, p. 32119Kaplan R. & Cooper R., “Cost and Effect. How to use ABC, ABM and ABB, to improve management, processes and profitability ", Gestión 2000, page, 401Dávila A.," New control tools "Student magazine, IESE, page Kaplan S. Norton D., "Balanced scorecard", edit. Management 2000, p. 32119Kaplan R. & Cooper R., “Cost and Effect. How to use ABC, ABM and ABB, to improve management, processes and profitability ", Gestión 2000, page, 401Dávila A.," New control tools "Student magazine, IESE, page Kaplan S. Norton D., "Balanced scorecard", edit. Management 2000, p. 321Olve N., Roy J. and Wetter M., "Implementing and managing the Balanced Scorecard", edit. Management 2000, p. 370
