3.3.4 Taking Corrective Actions

After actual performance has been measured compared with established performance standards, the next step in the controlling process is to take corrective action, if necessary. Corrective action is managerial activity aimed at bringing organizational performance up to the level of performance standards. In other words, corrective action focuses on correcting organizational mistakes that hinder organizational performance. Before taking any corrective action, however, managers should make sure that the standards they are using were properly established and that their measurements of organizational performance are valid and reliable.

At first glance, it seems a fairly simple proposition that managers should take corrective action to eliminate problems - the factors within an organization that are barriers to organizational goal attainment. In practice, however, it is often difficult to pinpoint the problem causing some undesirable organizational effect.

Once the problem has been properly identified, corrective action can focus on one or more of the three primacy management functions of planning, organizing and influencing.

What are the main types of control?

There are mainly three types of control, these are:

a)    Pre control: control that takes place before work is performed is called pre control, or feed-forward control. Managers using this type of control create policies, procedures, and rules aimed at eliminating behavior that will cause undesirable work results. For example, the manager of a small record shop may find that a major factor in attracting return customers is having salespeople discuss records with customers. This manager might use pre control by establishing a rule that sales people cannot talk to one another while a customer is in the store. This rule is a pre control because it is aimed at eliminating anticipated problems; salespeople can be so engrossed in conversation with one another that they neglect to chat with customers about records. In summary, pre control focuses on eliminating predicted problems.

b)    Concurrent control: this refers to the control that takes place as work is being performed. It relates not only to employees performance but also to such nonhuman areas as equipment performance and department appearance.

c)    Feedback Control: this refers to the control that concentrates on the post organizational performance. Managers exercising this type of control are attempting to take corrective action by looking at organizational history over a specified time period. This history may involve only one factor, such as inventory levels, or it may involve the relationships among many factors, such as the net income before taxes, sales volume, and marketing costs.

What are the requirements for adequate controls?

It is known that all managers want to have an adequate and effective system of control to assist them in making sure that events conform to plans.

Accordingly;

a) Control should be tailored to plans and positions

This means that, all control techniques and systems should reflect the plans they are designed to follow. This is because every plan and every kind and phase of an operation has its unique characteristics.

EX:   controls for the sales department will differ from those for the finance department and those for the purchasing and personnel departments.

b) Control must be tailored to individual managers and their responsibilities

This means that controls must be tailored to the personality of individual managers. This because control systems and information are intended to help individual managers carry out their function of control. If they are not of a type that a manager can or will understand, they will not be useful.

c) Control should point up exceptions as critical points

This is because by concentration on exceptions from planned performance, controls based on the time honored exception principle allow managers to detect those places where their attention is required and should be given. However, it is not enough to look at exceptions, because some deviations from standards have little meaning and others have a great deal of significance.

d) Control should be objective

This is because when controls are subjective, a manager’s personality may influence judgments of performance inaccuracy.

Objective standards can be quantitative such as costs or man hours per unit or date of job completion. They can also be qualitative in the case of training programs that have specific characteristics or are designed to accomplish a specific kind of upgrading of the quality of personnel.

e) Control should be flexible

This means that controls should remain workable in the case of changed plans, unforeseen circumstances, or outsight failures. Much flexibility in control can be provided by having alternative plans for various probable situations.

f) Control should be economical

This means that control must worth their cost. Although this requirement is simple, its practice is often complex. This is because a manager may find it difficult to know what a particular system is worth, or to know what it costs.

g) Control should lead to corrective actions

This is because a control system will be of little benefit if it does not lead to corrective action, control is justified only if the indicated or experienced deviations from plans are corrected through appropriate planning, organizing, directing, and leading.

What are the main barriers to successful controlling?

There are many barriers, among the most important of them:

(1)       Control activities can create an undesirable overemphasis on short-term production as opposed to long- term production.

(2)       Control activities can increase employees' frustration with their jobs and thereby reduce morale. This reaction tends to occur primarily where management exerts too much control.

(3)       Control activities can encourage the falsification of reports.

(4)       Control activities can cause the perspectives of organization members to be too narrow for the good of the organization.

(5)       Control activities can be perceived as the goals of the control process rather than the means by which corrective action is taken.