Managerial Control Ratios: an Integrated Analytical Framework

Abstract

Economic development rests heavily on two closely interrelated processes: specialisation and integration. The increasing specialisation of human capacities, organisational functions, productive facilities and other resources offers the enticing prospect of still further gains in efficiency along with reductions in cost. But these potentials can be realised only if the growing multiplicity of specialised operations can be effectively fitted together so as to minimise overlapping, conflicts and dislocations among the parts. For many years now the largely technical developments which underlie specialisation have been forging ahead more rapidly than the capacity of industrial establishments to utilise fully the advances which they offer. One of the major reasons for this lag has been the failure to improve managerial control techniques, which are the tools of integration.