Levers of Control: How Managers Use Innovative Control Systems to Drive Strategic Renewal

Description

This text identifies a critical link between strategy and control, redefines and broadens the concept of control systems, and offers a set of tools to implement strategy within those systems. It aims to equip managers with the skills to identify and respond to emerging markets. It also shows managers how to simultaneously retain control of an organization and capitalize on the drive, autonomy and creativity of employees.

Robert Simons is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. During the last eleven years, Simons has taught accounting, strategy, and management control courses in both the Harvard MBA Program and the Executive Education Programs. A Canadian Chartered Accountant, Simons worked as an auditor and consultant with Price Waterhouse before earning his Ph.D. from McGill University with a joint concentration in control and business policy. His ongoing research into the relationship between business strategy and management control systems has been published in academic journals and books such as Strategic Management Journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting and Management: Field Study Perspectives, and Journal of Accounting Literature. Professor Simons has served as a consultant to a number of corporations on matters of organization structure, strategic planning, and control systems. He has testified as an expert witness before State Public Utility Commissions and in U.S. Federal Court. He lives with his wife and three children in Cohasset, twenty miles south of Boston