Management Control Reports Not by Money Alone . . .

The extent of effectiveness of management control reports has not matched the great promise generated by the development of concepts of management planning and control, and advances made in data processing in the last decade. The primary reason for this gap is the monetary orientation of such reports. Analyses of current theory and practice indicate that while the requirements of non-monetary or operational data for control has been recognized, they have not been translated into an operational and managerial framework. Recent studies of Hofstede, Sord and Welsch, and Bhattacharyya and Camillas have highlighted the need for integrating monetary and non-monetary data into a common framework. They have also suggested operational and managerial guidelines for designing management control reports reflecting the critical variables at various levels of management. In this article, the 'nature of such variables has been analysed in some detail and illustrated, assumptions for designing effective management planning and control reports have been formulated, and a conceptual framework has been suggested.