ABSTRACT
Planning, organizing and controlling are each vital functions in the management process. While management theory provides much information concerning planning and especially organizing, this chapter analyses only the function of controlling. Control has long been considered "to be one of the most neglected and least understood areas of management activity". Harrington Emerson may perhaps be credited with the first meaningful contribution to the development of twentieth-century management control theory. General disagreement and a lack of codification have basically-characterized the development of the function of control. The nineteen-twenties were a period of continued widespread acceptance of the exception principle. The exception principle: efficiency in control requires that attention of the manager be given primarily to significant exceptions. The exception principle was also included in each edition of Harold D. Koontz and O'Donnell's principles of management textbook.
