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

Robert Simons

11/1994 · Harvard Business Press

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Based on a ten-year examination of control systems in over 50 U.S. businesses, this book broadens the definition of control and establishes a critical bridge between the disciplines of strategy and accounting and control. In addition to the more traditional diagnostic control systems, Simons identifies three new control systems that allow strategic change: belief systems that communicate core values and provide inspiration and direction, boundary systems that frame the strategic domain and define the limits of freedom, and interactive systems that provide flexibility in adapting to competitive environments and encourage organizational learning. These four control systems, according to Simons, will provide managers with the basic levers for pursuing strategic objectives.

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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