One of the necessary prerequisite for the successful functioning of any business are control mechanisms. They are created to ensure that the company develops according to a preestablished plan and achieves its goals by directing and managing the work of the company’s employees (Bateman & Snell, 2008).
In the modern practice of management, researchers single out three types of management control: bureaucratic, market, and clan control. The characteristics of bureaucratic control include application of formal rules and standards in a hierarchical structure based on authority (Bateman & Snell, 2008).
Market control features prices, competition, and profit as its basis, and establishes market relationships between business parties (Bateman & Snell, 2008).
Lastly, clan control differs from the aforementioned two types of control in the fact that rather than basing on authoritative tradition, it employs the relationships of cooperation between parties who share common values, beliefs, and culture, and express deep trust in each other (Bateman & Snell, 2008).
The Boeing Company is an example of a business that opts for employing a whole system of different control types that help balancing the company’s activities. On the one hand, the Boeing Company employs bureaucratic control mechanisms embodied in The Boeing Company Code of Basic Working Conditions and Human Rights (The Boeing Company, 2010).
The Code stipulates the key standards of attitudes to employees and recognizes their role in developing the Boeing business. In this respect, the Boeing Company demonstrates utilization of clan control principles as well, since it expresses deep trust in its employees. Clan control principles become obvious in the Boeing Company statement on culture (The Boeing Company, 2010).
The principles of clan control reveal themselves, inter alia, in values such as cooperative effort encouraging the Boeing diverse team to involve actively in the constant process of innovation (The Boeing Company, 2010). Diversity and inclusion signify the Boeing Company tendency to employ marketing control principles as well. The Executive Commitment to Diversity exemplifies the company’s striving to creativity and innovation as the core objectives of its activities (The Boeing Company, 2010).
In addition, marketing control principles reveal themselves in the activities of Boeing Capital Corporation that provides financial solutions to the company, and in the creation of Global Corporate Citizenship that promotes cooperation among various branches of Boeing industries for mutual benefit (The Boeing Company, 2010).
When evaluating the effectiveness of the aforementioned control mechanisms, it becomes obvious that the key to the Boeing Company success on the market lies in the interrelation and combination of all the three types of control mechanisms. On the one hand, bureaucratic mechanisms allow for preserving a certain authoritative basis that unites a whole set of separate organizations and provides the employees with rigid standards of behavior.
On the other hand, the employees are highly motivated to demonstrate their constant individual input in the common business by promoting individual creativity and innovative ideas. The direction of the Boeing Company control activities towards the market allows creating a weighted system of checks and balances from all the cooperating businesses which assist each other in successful activities.
The main result of such synthesized approach to employing various types of control mechanisms is aimed at customer satisfaction: customer is the key to the Boeing Company success, and therefore employment of all the three types of control mechanisms benefits comprehensive customer satisfaction and consequently adds to the company’s success.
References
Bateman, T. S., & Snell, S. A. (2008). Management: Leading and collaborating in a competitive world (8th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
The Boeing Company. (2010). Web.