ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 consists of five parts. In the first part, a technical control model of a budget control system is presented as ‘the engineer’s point of view’. In the second part, it gives a short description of General Systems Theory, and it shows how this can help us to integrate the viewpoints of various disciplines. The building of conceptual models of organizational processes is discussed in the light of General Systems Theory. These models can be descriptive or mathematical. The third part of the chapter gives five examples of mathematical models of organizations in which budgets play a role: those of Forrester and Roberts, Cyert and March, Bonini, Stedry and Charnes, and Mattessich. The fourth part shows a general descriptive model of a budget control system drawn by me, which can be seen as a map for the rest of the book. The fifth part introduces the concept of control limits, with its technical, organizational and motivational implications, and it shows how control limits are a technical tool to help creating the game situation in budget control.
