Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2) Explain some factors which may influence top management style and the implication
of the top management style on management control.
Style affects the management control process – how the CEO prefers to use the information,
conducts performance review meetings, and so on – which in turn affects how the control system
actually operates, even if the formal structure does not change under a new CEO. In fact, when
CEOs change, subordinates typically infer what the new CEO really wants based on how he or she
interacts during the management control process.
Personal versus Impersonal Controls
Presence of personal versus impersonal controls in organizations is an aspect of managerial style.
Managers differ on how much importance they attach to formal budgets and reports as well as
informal conversations and other personal contacts. Some managers are "numbers oriented"; they
want a large flow of quantitative information, and they spend much time analyzing this
information and deriving tentative conclusions from it. Other managers are "people oriented";
they look at a few numbers, but they usually arrive at their conclusions by talking with people,
judging the relevance and importance of what they learn partly on their appraisal of the other
person. They visit various locations and spend time talking with both supervisors and staff to get
a sense of how well things are going.
Managers' attitudes toward formal reports affect the amount of detail they want, the frequency of
these reports, and even their preference for graphs rather than tables of numbers, and whether
they want numerical reports supplemented with written comments. Designers of management
control systems need to identify these preferences and accommodate them.
The style of the CEO has a profound impact on management control. If a new senior manager
with a different style takes over, the system tends to change correspondingly. It might happen that
the manager's style is not a good fit with the organization's management control requirements. If
the manager recognizes this incongruity and adapts his or her style accordingly, the problem
disappears. If, however, the manager is unwilling or unable to change, the organization will
experience performance problems. The solution in this case might be to change the manager.