I agree that control is not synonymous with management, but it is an element of effective management. It must be balanced with other managerial skills. In addition, the use of control when used effectively is precisely to some individuals and not generically applied to all individuals in a work unit. To demonstrate this, I developed an interactive exercise entitled, "Demonstrating the Positive Side of Control," that can be downloaded from
http://perdue.ssu.edu/~fmshippe/control.htm.
In addition, I agree with Bacal's Corollary, " What can easily be measured is often not worth measuring, while what
is difficult to measure is often what we need to attend to, " but what sometimes separates effective from ineffective managers is the willingness to put in the hard work required to measure the important things that are often hard to measure. If it was easy, effective managers would not be in such short supply.
Frank Shipper, Ph.D.
Professor of Management
Perdue School of Business
Salisbury State University
1100 Camden Avenue
Salisbury, MD 21801
Phone: (410) 543-6333
Fax: (410) 548-2908
E-mail:
fmshipper@ssu.edu
Home Page: http://perdue.ssu.edu/~fmshippe/welcome.htm