ABSTRACT
The governance structure through which the Tesco group was directed and controlled pre-2011, as explained by an interviewee is illustrated. The last fifteen years have been something of a roller coaster for Tesco, with a decade of rapid growth, followed by an accounting scandal that resulted in the group reporting losses of £6.5 billion in 2015. The scandal influenced thinking about risk management, and so the case study is split into two time frames: 2004–2014 and 2015–2020. The retail council, made up of around forty people, was responsible for aggregating all the key decisions taken by the board and the associated committees and cascading that information down through the business. The steering wheel – Tesco’s version of a balanced scorecard – was used for performance measurement and management against targets laid down in the group’s five-year rolling plan and lay at the centre of the performance-based control system.
