This passage is taken from our text book, Management and Cost Accounting 8 edition, which is written by Drury Colin. The author is an emeritus professor at Huddersfield University and a leading textbook author for a generation of accounting students. His books have been widely recommended by the main professional accounting bodies. He is an active researcher and published in the main peer-reviewed journals including Management Accounting Research and European Accounting Review, with his research focusing on the application of management accounting techniques in British industry.

This short article is only an extract of the whole chapter, which mainly introduce the general control systems used in different companies. The author distinguishes between strategic control and management control first; and emphasis on the management control systems. He states that the aim of this kind of control is to influence employee behaviours in desirable ways in order to increase the probability that an organization’s objectives will be achieved.

In our real life, companies use many different control systems address problems and make actions more efficiently and accurately. In this passage, action control and results control are explained and classified in details accompany with other types of controls like personnel, cultural and social control. Each of them has their own benefits and weaknesses whilst different types of system are also use in different situations.

Compare with these management control systems, action controls are the most effective form of control because there is a direct link between the control and the action and also a high probability that desirable outcomes will occur. They avoid the need to measure the results but the limitation is that they are dependent on cause-and-effect work relationships and this does not apply in many situations.

The main advantage of results controls is that they can be applied when there is lack of knowledge before the action is taken. This situation applies in most organizations, so it is more applicable. A second benefit of results controls is that their application does not restrict individual autonomy. The focus is on the outcomes thus giving individuals the freedom to determine how they can best achieve the outcomes. Individuals are not force to follow certain rules and procedures. However, in many cases, the results required can only be partially specified and there can be difficulties in separating controllable and uncontrollable factors.

Actually, personnel, cultural and social controls are also control systems that need to be considered. Some people suggest that when deciding on the control alternatives managers should start by considering whether personnel or cultural controls will be sufficient on their own because they have few harmful side-effects. Also in small organizations they may be completely effective without the need to supplement them with other forms of controls.

The main reason that I choose this passage is that it is essential for the students who learnt management accounting. Control is the process of ensuring that a firm’s activities conform to its plan and that its objectives are achieved. To some extent, controls represent direction. It is important to a manager to decide the most efficient and useful control system within a company. Therefore, they can make sure that actual work is done to fulfill the original ovjectives and it also helpful to provide information to determining the control action. For example, material costs may be greater than budget. In this situation, it will indicate that costs exceed budget and that this may be because the purchase of poor quality materials causes excessive wastage. In addition, I think more research need to be conducted in this area like the combination of different control systems used in companies and how the changes of these combinations will influence the performance and the results of the company.