Vingt ans de contrôle de gestion ou le passage d'une technique à une discipline

Management control has grown into an academic discipline and a field for research. But, in the meantime, the paradigms of its so-called classical model have been put into light and questioned. A lot of innovations have been proposed to controllers with a view to modernize management control. The traditional representation of the management process, inherited from Fayol and theorized by the economic theory of organizations, is challenged by Simon. Management control is, more than ever, looked at as a mean not of mere compliance, but of organizational learning and of strategic emergence. The spread of ERPs seems to speed up this evolution. A major distinction has to be done between management control as a process and the specific part played in it by the controller. This part is bound to change deeply in the next future.