The problem of control is associated with the problem of organisational growth and survival. Formal organisations maintain a position of equilibrium by using control devices properly. The discussion on decision-making and communication flows into the larger control in an organisation. Generally speaking, control has a negative and restrictive meaning.
The organisational control system is a means for checking and verifying organisational goal achievement. Control is a technical problem in achieving the organisational goal. But, its exercise evokes various types of responses from the members in an organisation. The control is required to watch progress of work and to guard against possibilities of outcome failure. Proper information about administrative system’s performance is necessary for timely decisions that emanate as control measures.
The main purpose of control is to make sure that actual operation conforms to established standards. In addition, timely information about work performance is essential so that corrective action could be taken in case of any problem reported in course of performance.
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Effective supervision, monitoring and evaluation are important constituents of the control process in administration. This method of control stands for mid- course control and is popularly known as “monitoring”. When an activity has reached the stage of completion, the comparison between the final result achieved and the planned result is known as “evaluation”. Both monitoring and evaluation involve comparison of actual performance against predetermined goals and are very important in the process of control.
The control philosophies of personnel and managers affect the way control exercised. In case of the subordinates, they react to the control by their varying involvement postures. The pattern of control, which characterises an organisation, is called control structure. The control structures in an organisation are related to a sense of involvement among the members.
In a coercive control structure, the persons being controlled do not feel psychologically involved in organisational affairs. It generates alternative involvement of alienation of personnel. The utilitarian control structure provides calculative involvement, subordinates work in return for payments being received, and there is no intrinsic involvement for organisational work.
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The normative control structure speaks of moral involvement. Personnel perceive the organisational tasks as intrinsically good and valuable, and they enjoy doing their work for the organisation in the spirit of a moral duty. For good results, an organisation can have a mix of all the control structures, but in practice most of the organisations have the predominance of one of the three.
For example, prisons will fall in the coercive control category; religious and voluntary organisations will fall in the normative category, and most of the government organisations will fall in the utilitarian category. Mohit Bhattacharya opines that Etzioni’s classificatory scheme has implications for top-level management in public organisations. In most of the government organisations, motivation to work is generally lacking and the interpersonal relations are also not very good.
It largely depends on the nature of Leadership to transform the extent of involvement of members through control in achieving the organisational goals for which proper coordination is imperative.