Introduction

Control has traditionally been a focus of attention for practitioners and researchers in the management and accounting disciplines. Together with planning it has often been treated as an indispensible requirement for effective organisational functioning. While the subject of control has consistently attracted interest and discussion over many years, its conceptual nature does not appear to have been particularly well understood. This general lack of understanding has been reflected in the apparent failure of many writers to appreciate the variety of control concepts which they utilise (possibly unconsciously) from time to time, the schools of thought from which such concepts emanated and the historical development of such concepts. All too often the conceptual nature of control has been accorded little more than a brief and trite definitional statement.