Understanding Management Control and Organisational Sense-making

This book centres around three different areas; management control, organisations and information systems - in order to understand what is actually going on and to make sense of management control questions. Management control techniques used today could in many cases be traced back to industrialisation. With the help of computeraised information systems, the speed and detail with which a manager could get a hold of important information has increased. Today, it has become even more important to be able to choose what information to work with and that the context in which it should be used is understood. Organisational sense-making is in many ways an interesting and important path to take in order to do this. When working with the management control function, it is important to understand the organisation where the work is undertaken. One important part of the function is planning and another is control. Both are needed in order for the management control function to work. Performance is often a key ingredient when trying to find out what is working in a plan and what is not and here the understanding for information becomes necessary. Since the work is done within an organsation, both by managers and employees, it is also crucial to find ways to work with not only models, methods and techniques but also people and social dimensions.