Top Management — The Controllership Function

This chapter refines differences and similarities in top management control by looking at the organisation and function of the control departments. It has been selected for several reasons. As a specific department it gives a fair representation of the formal systems at work — at least in the fmancial area within which the basic top management reporting systems are designed and worked out. It thus provides additional data on the formal ways (documents, processes, methods) in which control is practiced. Furthermore, from the top management point of view, the control department — as a staff function — is often the privileged location for collecting and analysing performance. Thus it can shed light on the way chief executives monitor performance by looking how information is collected to be given to chief executives.