Control is one of the managerial functions like planning, organizing, staffing and directing. It is an important function because it helps to check the errors and to take the corrective action so that deviation from standards are minimized and stated goals of the organization are achieved in desired manner. According to modern concepts, control is a foreseeing action whereas earlier concept of control was used only when errors were detected. Control in management means setting standards, measuring actual performance and taking corrective action. Thus, control comprises these three main activities.
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Definitions
Control of an undertaking consists of seeing that everything is being carried out in accordance with the plan which has been adopted, the orders which have been given, and the principles which have been laid down. Its object is to point out mistakes in order that they may be rectified and prevented from recurring.
According to EFL Breach,
Control is checking current performance against pre-determined standards contained in the plans, with a view to ensure adequate progress and satisfactory performance.
According to Harold Koontz,
Controlling is the measurement and correction of performance in order to make sure that enterprise objectives and the plans devised to attain them are accomplished.
Management is the profession of control.
In 1916, Henri Fayol Henri Fayol was a French mining engineer, director of mines, and management theorist, who developed independent of the theory of Scientific Management, a general theory of business administration also known as Fayolism. He was one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management formulated one of the first definitions of control as it pertains to management:
Control consists of verifying whether everything occurs in conformity with the plan adopted, the instructions issued, and principles established. It ['s] object [is] to point out weaknesses and errors in order to rectify [them] and prevent recurrence.[1]
Robert J. Mockler presented a more comprehensive definition of managerial control:
Management control can be defined as a systematic effort by business management to compare performance to predetermined standards, plans, or objectives in order to determine whether performance is in line with these standards and presumably in order to take any remedial action required to see that human and other corporate resources are being used in the most effective and efficient way possible in achieving corporate objectives.[2]
Also control can be defined as "that function of the system that adjusts operations as needed to achieve the plan, or to maintain variations from system objectives within allowable limits". The control subsystem functions in close harmony with the operating system. The degree to which they interact depends on the nature of the operating system and its objectives. Stability concerns a system's ability to maintain a pattern of output without wide fluctuations. Rapidity of response pertains to the speed with which a system can correct variations and return to expected output. [3]
A political election can illustrate the concept of control and the importance of feedback. Each party organizes a campaign to get its candidate selected and outlines a plan to inform the public about both the candidate's credentials and the party's platform. As the election nears, opinion polls furnish feedback about the effectiveness of the campaign and about each candidate's chances to win. Depending on the nature of this feedback, certain adjustments in strategy and/or tactics can be made in an attempt to achieve the desired result.
From these definitions it can be stated that there is close link between planning and controlling. Planning is a process by which an organisation's objectives and the methods to achieve the objectives are established, and controlling is a process which measures and directs the actual performance against the planned objectives of the organisation. Thus, planning and control are often referred to as siamese twins Conjoined/Siamese twins are identical twins whose bodies are joined in utero. A rare phenomenon, the occurrence is estimated to range from 1 in 50,000 births to 1 in 200,000 births, with a somewhat higher incidence in Southwest Asia and Africa. Approximately half are stillborn, and a smaller fraction of pairs born alive have abnormalities of management Management in all business areas and organizational activities are the acts of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing.
Characteristics of Control
- Control is a continuous process
- Control is a management process
- Control is embedded in each level of organizational hierarchy
- Control is forward looking
- Control is closely linked with planning
- Control is a tool for achieving organizational activities
The elements of control
The four basic elements in a control system — (1) the characteristic or condition to be controlled, (2) the sensor, (3) the comparator , and (4) the activator — occur in the same sequence and maintain a consistent relationship to each other in every system.[3]
The first element is the characteristic or condition of the operating system which is to be measured. We select a specific characteristic because a correlation exists between it and how the system System is a set of interacting or interdependent entities forming an integrated whole is performing. The characteristic may be the output of the system during any stage of processing or it may be a condition that has resulted from the output of the system. For example, it may be the heat energy produced by the furnace or the temperature in the room which has changed because of the heat generated by the furnace. In an elementary school system, the hours a teacher works or the gain in knowledge demonstrated by the students on a national examination are examples of characteristics that may be selected for measurement, or control. The second element of control, the sensor, is a means for measuring the characteristic or condition. The control subsystem must be designed to include a sensory device or method of measurement. In a home heating system this device would be the thermostat, and in a quality-control system this measurement might be performed by a visual inspection of the product.
The third element of control, the comparator In electronics, a comparator is a device which compares two voltages or currents and switches its output to indicate which is larger, determines the need for correction by comparing what is occurring with what has been planned. Some deviation from plan is usual and expected, but when variations are beyond those considered acceptable, corrective action is required. It is often possible to identify trends in performance and to take action before an unacceptable variation from the norm occurs. This sort of preventative action indicates that good control is being achieved.
The fourth element of control, the activator, is the corrective action taken to return the system to expected output. The actual person, device, or method used to direct corrective inputs into the operating system may take a variety of forms. It may be a hydraulic controller positioned by a solenoid or electric motor in response to an electronic error signal, an employee directed to rework the parts that failed to pass quality inspection, or a school principal who decides to buy additional books to provide for an increased number of students. As long as a plan is performed within allowable limits, corrective action is not necessary; this seldom occurs in practice, however.
Information Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is an ordered sequence of symbols. As a concept, however, information has many meanings. Moreover, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation is the medium of control, because the flow of sensory data and later the flow of corrective information allow a characteristic or condition of the system to be controlled. To illustrate how information flow facilitates control, let us review the elements of control in the context of information.[4]
Relationship between the elements of control and information
Controlled Characteristic or. Condition The primary requirement of a control system is that it maintain the level and kind of output necessary to achieve the system's objectives.[5] It is usually impractical to control every feature and condition associated with the system's output Output is the term denoting either an exit or changes which exit a system and which activate/modify a process. It is an abstract concept, used in the modeling, system design and system(s) exploitation. Therefore, the choice of the controlled item (and appropriate information about it) is extremely important. There should be a direct correlation between the controlled item and the system's operation. In other words, control of the selected characteristic should have a direct relationship to the goal or objective of the system.
Sensor
After the characteristic Characteristic (from the Greek word for a property or attribute of an entity[citation needed]) may refer to: is sensed, or measured, information pertinent to control is fed back. Exactly what information needs to be transmitted and also the language that will best facilitate the communication process and reduce the possibility of distortion in transmission must be carefully considered. Information that is to be compared with the standard, or plan, should be expressed in the same terms or language as in the original plan to facilitate decision making. Using machine methods (computers) may require extensive translation of the information. Since optimal languages for computation and for human review are not always the same, the relative ease of translation may be a significant factor in selecting the units of measurement or the language unit in the sensing element.
In many instances, the measurement may be sampled rather than providing a complete and continuous feedback of information about the operation. A sampling procedure suggests measuring some segment or portion of the operation that will represent the total.[2]
Comparison with Standard
In a social system Social structure is a term used in the social sciences to refer to patterned social arrangements which form the society as a whole, and which determine, to some varying degree, the actions of the individuals socialised into that structure. Whereas 'structure' refers to "the macro", "agency" refers to "the micro", the norms of acceptable behavior become the standard against which so-called deviant behavior may be judged. Regulations and laws provide a more formal collection of information for society. Social norms change, but very slowly. In contrast, the standards outlined by a formal law can be changed from one day to the next through revision, discontinuation, or replacement by another. Information about deviant behavior becomes the basis for controlling social activity. Output information is compared with the standard or norm and significant deviations are noted. In an industrial example, frequency distribution (a tabulation of the number of times a given characteristic occurs within the sample of products being checked) may be used to show the average quality, the spread, and the comparison of output with a standard.
If there is a significant and uncorrectable difference between output and plan, the system is "out of control." This means that the objectives of the system are not feasible in relation to the capabilities of the present design. Either the objectives must be reevaluated or the system redesigned to add new capacity or capability. For example, the traffic in drugs has been increasing in some cities at an alarming rate. The citizens must decide whether to revise the police system so as to regain control, or whether to modify the law to reflect a different norm of acceptable behavior.
Activator
The activator unit responds to the information Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is an ordered sequence of symbols. As a concept, however, information has many meanings. Moreover, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation received from the comparator and initiates corrective action. If the system is a machine-to-machine system, the corrective inputs (decision rules) are designed into the network. When the control relates to a man-to-machine or man-to-man system, however, the individual(s) in charge must evaluate (1) the accuracy of the feedback information, (2) the significance of the variation, and (3) what corrective inputs will restore the system to a reasonable degree of stability. Once the decision has been made to direct new inputs into the system System is a set of interacting or interdependent entities forming an integrated whole, the actual process may be relatively easy. A small amount of energy can change the operation of jet airplanes, automatic steel mills, and hydroelectric power plants. The pilot presses a button, and the landing gear of the airplane goes up or down; the operator of a steel mill pushes a lever, and a ribbon of white-hot steel races through the plant; a worker at a control board directs the flow of electrical energy throughout a regional network of stations and substations. It takes but a small amount of control energy to release or stop large quantities of input. [4]
The comparator may be located far from the operating system An operating system is the software on a computer that manages the way different programs use its hardware, and regulates the ways that a user controls the computer. Operating systems are found on almost any device that contains a computer with multiple programs—from cellular phones and video game consoles to supercomputers and web servers. Some, although at least some of the elements must be in close proximity to operations. For example, the measurement (the sensory element) is usually at the point of operations. The measurement information can be transmitted to a distant point for comparison with the standard (comparator), and when deviations occur, the correcting input can be released from the distant point. However, the input (activator) will be located at the operating system. This ability to control from afar means that aircraft can be flown by remote control, dangerous manufacturing processes can be operated from a safe distance, and national organizations can be directed from centralized headquarters.
Process of Controlling
- Setting performance standards.
- Measurement of actual performance.
- Comparing actual performance with standards.
- Analysing deviations.
- Correcting deviations.
Kinds of control
Control may be grouped according to three general classifications: (1) the nature of the information flow designed into the system (that is, open- or closed-loop control), (2) the kind of components included in the design (that is man or machine control systems), and (3) the relationship of control to the decision process (that is, organizational or operational control). [3]
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