Management Control

Introduction

The objective of this course is to introduce participants to approaches of both conventional management control and contemporary management control. The latter is conceived as the management control of the knowledge-based firm.

Main proposition is that the object of control has moved over time from the financial denominator to the knowledge denominator, extending control and steering efforts towards knowledge-sharing and peer-to-peer collaboration and learning, and incorporating concepts from Organisational Behaviour and Design, and Knowledge Management. 

The course is entirely taught online within Insendi and uses primarily digital means for course delivery.

Course content

The course consists of (guest) lectures, group-based casework, and an individual course paper. Lectures introduce the indicated topics conceptually and explore it in terms of managerial implications and the links to other areas of management. Lectures are categorized into three topical areas:
 

• Introduction: purpose of management control systems (strategy implementation), causality & coherence and the role of technology (ERP, Cloud, Visual Analytics), behavioural patterns (team dynamics, collaboration and peer-to-peer learning, performance visualization & identification).
 

• Conventional management control and performance measurement: responsibility centers, accounting performance measurement, budgeting, closed-loop financial logic.
 

• Contemporary management control: Beyond Budgeting, non-financial performance measurement advances such as Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), interactive control systems and the performance measurement of networked, collaborative knowledge organisations.

Key elements of the introduction to MCS (technology, behavioural patterns) and of contemporary management control (OKRs, non-financial performance measurement) are part of the course design and course delivery, thus “practising what it preaches”.

This course is the last course of a triplet called “Money Matters”. Nevertheless, each course can also be taken separately as a standalone course.

The relationship with the first course - Financial Management - and the second course in the triplet - Treasury Management - is primarily located within the Conventional Management Control and Performance Measurement topical category. One of the cases used, will also act as a link with the preceding two courses, thus achieving further topical consistency.