Abstract
In this chapter we argue that management control with respect to financial and material resources is connected to issues of safety and security; the delivery of safety and security may be seriously hampered by improper management control. Starting from this connection we aim to decipher the dynamics that may improve current management control practices. Theoretically we endorse the distinction between so-called hard, formal and soft, informal controls. We performed an analysis of 17 interviews with financial specialists at the central staff units and 6 interviews with (deputy-) commanders of the services and support units of the Dutch defence organization; furthermore we analysed the answers to open questions in a survey study. These answers were given by employees with responsibilities in respectively financial and material resources management. We concluded that improvement in hard controls predominantly can be found in modernizing control procedures, which boils down to introducing less restrictive, simpler rules, auditing with the purpose to teach employees to improve their control practices and a smarter use of recording in the IT-systems. At the same time an improvement in soft controls—particularly feasibility, sanctionability, congruency and discussability—may be achieved if adequate attention is paid to these aspects of leadership, supervision and communication. Thus, management control is a matter of the right mix of both hard, formal instruments and soft, informal practices.
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Notes
- 1.
Merchant and van der Stede 2012.
- 2.
Malmi and Brown 2008.
- 3.
- 4.
Barnard 1982, p. 123.
- 5.
Kaptein 2011.
- 6.
Merchant and van der Stede 2012, pp. 83–92.
- 7.
Wilson 1989.
- 8.
For an overview see Alveson 2013.
- 9.
Sims and Brinkmann 2003.
- 10.
Public financial management may be defined as the system for generating and controlling public financial resources for effective and efficient public service delivery. It involves planning and budgeting, accounting and reporting, internal controls, audit and external oversight with a view to: availability of benefits to the greatest number of citizens, support of good governance and the attainment of the three budgetary goals of aggregate fiscal discipline, effective allocation of resources to priorities and efficient service delivery, Hamid 2013; Material management, according to Ghiani et al. 2004, deals with the planning and control of material flows and related information in organizations. Its goal is to get the right materials to the right place at the right time, while optimizing a given performance measure (e.g., minimizing total operating costs) and satisfying a given set of constraints (e.g., a budget constraint).
- 11.
- 12.
Builder 1989.
- 13.
- 14.
Catasús and Grönlund 2005.
- 15.
Soeters 2016.
- 16.
- 17.
Builder 1989.
- 18.
Reich and Tillack 2014.
- 19.
Heeren-Bogers, Kaptein and Soeters 2013.
- 20.
Of the total of 111 selected units 571 employees with responsibilities in the area of finance and 436 employees with responsibilities in the area of material logistics were asked to fill out a hard copy questionnaire. We used pairwise deletion (Field 2009) to deal with missing values. This procedure led to two sub-samples of 238 respondents on financial management (=42 %) and 197 respondents on material resources management (=45 %) respectively for the analysis on the level of the individual respondent.
- 21.
Beeres et al. 2010.
- 22.
Vink and Kaptein 2008, p. 259.
- 23.
Kaptein 2008.
- 24.
Rietjens 2014.
- 25.
See Richardson and Kramer 2006.
- 26.
[C] = commander; [FS] = financial specialist.
- 27.
Soeters 2016.
- 28.
Five commanders express that the military culture is results-oriented, four describe the culture as military professional, two speak about the ‘can-do-mentality in the military, two speak about the heavy focus on operations, and two other commanders believe that efficiency is of secondary importance.
- 29.
Brænder (2016) has shown that soldiers who have experienced combat often have come to enjoy it and as a result want more of it.
- 30.
The so-called ‘Three Way Match’.
- 31.
De Sitter, den Hertog and Dankbaar 1997; Interestingly the city of Amsterdam faced comparable problems in their financial management control: too many islands in the city’s government running their own business, which made proper oversight of what was happening in the whole of the city impossible, Gualtherie van Weezel 2016.
- 32.
Adler and Borys 1996.
- 33.
Also see: Maas et al. 2014.
- 34.
Naus et al. 2007.
- 35.
Kaptein 2008.
- 36.
- 37.
Schaubroeck et al. 2012.
- 38.
Hardy, Lawrence and Grant 2005.
- 39.
Resteigne and Soeters 2009.
- 40.
Soeters 2016.
- 41.
Adler and Borys 1996.
- 42.
Ministry of Defence 2007 point 3, “I do not impair the interest of the Dutch defence organization and I set an example in attitude, appearance and behaviour. I deploy the resources entrusted to me in a responsible way and use them carefully and legitimately” (our translation).
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Acknowledgments
We are most grateful for the involvement of prof. dr. Muel Kaptein in this research project.
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Heeren-Bogers, J., Soeters, J. (2016). Improving the Management Control Mix for Safety and Security. In: Beeres, R., Bakx, G., de Waard, E., Rietjens, S. (eds) NL ARMS Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies 2016. NL ARMS. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-135-7_15
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