Integrating decision making and regulation in the management control process

Abstract

The significance of control in business is undeniable, and this work revisits management control and the management control process. An interpretation of existing approaches leads to a new way of integrating the managing processes of decision making and regulating. This promises to provide the means of a more explicit behavioural control of operational business processes. Such control is made possible where the controlled work activities (and the work activities of the manager) take place in an IT environment which possesses knowledge of such processes. The control action influences operational behaviour by manipulating the definition of these processes at run time. This will enable control structures to be more formalised where appropriate, improve coordination between control and operations, and improve coordination between control processes. Two implementable models of control processes are proposed together with an indication of how they might be integrated into business processes to provide holistic support for business activity.