• Total Quality Management (TQM)
• Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
• Time-Based Management (TBM)
• Lean Management (LM)
• Agile Management (AM).
Without entering into the heated discussion that has been taking place for several years in the economic press regarding the mutual relationships between contemporary management concepts, methods, and techniques, as well as their “longevity,” I would like to present the new challenges currently facing enterprise management using the now-classic method of controlling. The dynamic, abrupt, and increasingly unpredictable changes in the contemporary business environment require the constant resolution of two dilemmas:
• how an enterprise can anticipate changes in the environment and react to them in a flexible manner (the adaptation dilemma)
• what are the possibilities for shaping events in a purposeful and predictive manner (the coordination dilemma).
Controlling, as a method for compensating for tensions between the enterprise and its environment, attempts to resolve these dilemmas. The connection between controlling and the concept of logistics management, a comprehensive description of which goes beyond the scope of this article, manifests itself primarily in:
• resolving the dilemma of effective coordination of flows of goods and information (processes) in time and space
• flexible, rapid reconfiguration of process flows, i.e., resolving the adaptation dilemma.
Understanding controlling
I assume that controlling is a method of comprehensive and coordinated enterprise management, ensuring the rationality of formulating and achieving its goals, which most often take the form of:
• maintaining liquidity in the short term
• increasing the value of the enterprise in the long term.
The fundamental function of controlling is to provide information and methodological support to the enterprise management process. This support is anticipatory and adaptive in nature. The anticipatory function of controlling consists of providing information and methodological support for the strategy formulation process (strategic thinking), while the adaptive function of controlling is immanently linked to action, i.e., ensuring the effectiveness of implemented strategies.