Year
2009
Abstract
Where will management control go after the financial crisis? Though the majority of professional controllers wishes “less figures and more analysis”, number crushing missions seem to remain dominant. Why? Management control must address two clearly distinct needs: (i) controlling numbers, organizing budget and reporting, through the accounting and financial language, with a complete independence from controlled line managers, (ii) internal consulting, orchestrating the analysis and diagnosis of multi-criteria performance, coordinating improvement action plans in close cooperation with line managers. The relative weight of those two functional profiles depends on four factors: the time horizon of decision-making, the importance of cross-functional performance, how risk is managed and the type of governance. The control of numbers tended to become more dominant in the last fifteen years because those four factors were addressed with a coherent financial and short-range model. This is the easier choice too, because it is simpler to produce figures in conformance to formal standards than to build collective and risky judgments about complex situations. It is not clear how the practice will evolve after the crisis: will “figure-based management” be questioned, or will there be an escalation in the sophistication of financial numbers? The answer also depends on the future orientations of management research and education: will they prioritize the technical expertise of figure production and control, or will they develop the complex competences required by collective and situated inquiry?
LORINO, P. (2009). Le contrôle de gestion après la crise : expertise obstinée du chiffre ou métier d’enquête complexe ? Revue Française de Gestion, 193(3), pp. 29-35.