Budgetary Control

Abstract

In the influence held by a chief executive over the mentalities of his subordinates, whereby he secures from them the greatest possible producing effort, lies the real secret of his success. Many executives hold this influence by sheer personality. Others hold it by a combination of personality and the careful selection and provision of various schemes whereby the subordinates themselves are more or less automatically spurred on in their efforts.

It is a well-recognized fact that we are a nation of aggressive people; that we take business chances as a matter of course. The widespread interest in sports—golf, baseball, football, tennis, boxing, polo, etc.—is evidence of the sporting angles of the average American mind: the apparent evidence of a desire either to indulge in or to become interested in a game.

Budgetary control supplies to every one in any kind of a business institution a species of a game. The setting of quotas of performance and budgets of expense brings out a cool and calculating thought of the future and what it should yield. The daily watching of the current transactions becomes as fully absorbing as the watching of the electric score board of a World’s Series game. A par has been set and must be beaten.

The psychological effect of budgetary control is its greatest asset, and in this feature alone it takes its place as perhaps the most valuable of all more or less mechanical management aids.