WHICH FORM OF CONTROL?

Now this is where we need to be careful. Yes, management is about control; but we need to distinguish between two very different meanings of the word:

 1. Control as something that can be described and is therefore a descriptive concept.

 2. Control as a way of achieving a desired result and is therefore a prescriptive method.

Descriptive concepts are those which describe what is happening in any situation. For example, most of the time the situation on a road can be described as under control: cars are driving on the correct side of the road, they keep their distance and do not colide, they obey the traffic lights, etc. There is order and conformity to the safety objectives of the road traffic system, and this happens without some boss or manager observing what they are doing and giving orders.

Or take the healthy human body: its heart beats, its digestion works and its brain thinks without some manager observing what is happening and giving orders. But just a moment! Isn't the brain the manager giving orders through the nervous system? Well, not quite. For example: the brain cannot forbid the heart to beat and supply it with blood, or instruct the stomach to stop digesting food to supply it with energy. In the context of a healthy human body, control emerges as the result of all its components working together in a collaborative way. Yes, the brain does control the human body; but by linking the interactions and coordinating the workings of its components; not by acting like an isolated dictator sitting inside the skull issuing instructions and making the rest of the body fulfil its arbitrary wishes.

Yes, there are some situations where control seems to be the result of one person giving orders and others obeying them; but note that phrase 'seems to be': the reality is that control does not emerge just because someone  is giving orders; it also needs others to obey them. As before, the word control describes a situation which emerges as the result of components working together.

We could go further with this view of control as something that 'emerges as the result of components working together'. There are an enormous range of examples in the human, societal, biological and technological spheres; but it is enough for the moment to note just how rich that range of examples can be if we care to look.

Control as a prescriptive method, however, is a narrower and more selective meaning of the word. Being prescriptive means asserting how control ought to be brought into being. The thinly disguised assumption embedded in this view is that control can only exist if someone is the controller or the boss. This boss may be an elected parliament or a committee, but it sees itself as something that exerts control rather than being something that is just one component of a controlled situation. Such is the assumption behind the meliorist belief that human beings can manage the movement from 'where we are now' to 'where we would like to be'; and the human beings who manage are called managers.

But whichever of these two views of control we consider, then when they are applied to management, they involve human beings who attempt to manage. We call such people managers. Let's look at what they are - - - >