THE TWO WORLDS OF MANAGEMENT CONTROL

Abstract

The machine metaphor depicts organizations as if they were designed and operated like machines. Management control systems also build upon this metaphor. In this paper experiences from a longitudinal case study in the City of Bergen are reported. The study is based on data from the management control process, i.e. adopted budget data, prognoses during the accounting year, and actuals as reported in annual reports. The period studied is 1983–1987. From the reported data we can draw the following conclusions: (1) Decisions of future actions have little influence on the execution of future actions; (2) Data on past actions have little influence on decisions of future actions; (3) Data on past actions have little influence on prognoses of future actions; (4) Data on past decisions have some influence on prognoses of future actions; and (5) Data on actual prognoses have little influence on budgets for the next year. Consequently, we only observe elusive links between parts where the links are supposed to be strong.