Introduction
An Eco-control system can be regarded as the implication of the strategic and financial control methods, which is considered in the environmental management process. This is an important strategic approach, which helps to overcome different kinds of environmental sustainability issues, such as overcoming pollution issues, overcoming growing carbon emission issues, and overcoming GHG emission issues. An Eco-control system is nothing but a systematic management procedure, which is comprised of different important steps. These important steps are targeting, strategy development, decision support, data management, controlling, communication and implementation. It is an effective and efficient environmental sustainability management tool, which is utilised in different manufacturing units and production sites. Overall, the eco-controlling concept is entirely based on the financial controlling process.
On the other hand, a management control system is an important strategic system, which sources, gathers and utilises information to evaluate the performance of several organisational resources, such as financial resources, human resources, physical resources, and other tangible resources. This management control system always encourages the behaviour of the mentioned organisational resources to apply different kinds of organisational strategies. The management control systems either can be formal or can be informal. This particular assignment will analyse the importance of the management control system in improving the organisational performance of business organisations.
Discussion
The global business environment has become intensely competitive. Different micro enterprises, small enterprises, medium enterprises and large enterprises are adopting and implementing different kinds of competitive approaches in operation management activities to improve profitability. However, the adoption and implementation of different kinds of competitive approaches as well as aggressive activities are helping different firms to gain competitive advantages over other potential competitors within the industry. Despite the competitive advantages, some organisations are creating possibilities of legal challenges through such adopted and implemented aggressive business operation activities. Governments of different countries have introduced environmental sustainability policies for business organisations to reduce the volume of carbon emissions and maintain the environmental sustainability. In some cases, some organisations fail to control the level of carbon emission knowingly or unknowingly due to the adoption of aggressive business operation strategies. For example, unethical use of energy resources, petroleum resources, poor recycling, lack of waste management etc. These activities are knowingly or unknowingly causing environmental management and legal problems for the organisations. Therefore, it has become important for every organisation to maintain environmental sustainability by maintaining low carbon emissions (Liou et al., 2016). Carbon emission can be reduced in several ways, such as recycling of used water, zero solid waste management, use of substitute and eco-friendly energy resources, limited use of natural resources etc. Apart from these, modern-day firms are also using management control systems to reduce the carbon footprint during the business operation process.
The management control system is an important systematic technique, which is significantly used in collecting data and using such data in the business operation process to motivate both the employees and employers to perform effectively. Different types of management control system approaches are adopted and implemented by the organisations in the business operation process. Some of the notable management control system applications are activity-based costing, JIT approach, budgeting, benchmarking, balanced scorecard, total quality management, capital budgeting, incentive system, Kaizen etc. Organisations use some of these to improve the financial management activities, some are used for the improvement of marketing management activities, some are used to improve the human resource management activities, and some are used to improve operational management activities. The environmental performance of an organisation can be improved through the enhancement of the improvement of operational management activities through the application of a management control system (Henri and Journeault 2010). Kaizen can be considered as an important operational management control system, which is used in the improvement of business efficiency.
Kaizen is an important management control system, which is applied as a form cycling approach. This particular approach is generally applied in the production process. The major aim behind the application of this management control system is to improve the financial ability of a firm, operational efficiency of a firm, and environmental sustainability of a firm. This particular cycle is comprised of two separate cycles and these two cycles are known as the PDCA cycle. One PDCA cycle stands for plan, do, check, and act. On the other hand, the other PDCA cycle stands for problem finding, display, clear, and acknowledge. Both of these PDCA cycles are interlinked with each other (Dubey et al., 2015). The example of Toyota Motor Company can be considered in this part of the study to determine the fact that how this kaizen management control system helps a company in improving the environmental sustainability management of a company.
In terms of the first PDCA cycle, the operation management professionals of Toyota Motor Company used to identify the fact that growing carbon emission due to lack of waste management, recycling, and huge consumption of petroleum energy resources are the major problems of the organisations. The company management used to find out this particular problem through the consideration of the stakeholder engagement approach, which is part of the culture of the company. Then the management of the company used to display the problem in front of all the stakeholders through the 360-degree appraisal process. After displaying, all the involved stakeholders used to interact with each other regarding the development of the most suitable strategies to reduce the environmental challenges. Lastly, all the stakeholders used to acknowledge the commonly agreed developed policy. Considering the other PDCA cycle, it can be stated that planning is done in this cycle to identify the problems. After planning, all the involved stakeholders do develop collaborative strategies by getting engaged with each other. In terms of checking, all the involved stakeholders are responsible for checking whether the developed strategies are decided transparently or not. Lastly, all the involved stakeholders are responsible for the adoption and implementation of the decision strategies as a part of acting to reduce the possibilities of the level of carbon emission (Tushar et al., 2018).
Apart from Kaizen, there are other types of data management control systems, which are used by the operation management professionals in the business operation process to reduce the carbon footprint. The example of a carbon management system can be considered here. The carbon management system is nothing but an advanced management control system, which is comprised of advanced data management tools. This particular data management tool is highly efficient in measuring the emission level of carbon in the business operation process. The installation and application of this particular data management tool can significantly assist the operation management professionals to observe measure and record the volume of emitted carbon in the business operation process. After the data capturing step, this carbon management system is automatically responsible for calculating the captured data in the carbon emission process (Tachizawa and Wong 2015). Highly automation is integrated with the carbon emission process, which helps the operation management professionals to calculate the emitted carbon automatically. Compilation and reporting is the last function of the carbon management system. The automotive function of this application assists the professionals to compile the calculated record and this record is automatically displayed and recorded for the involved individuals. Hence, it is acceptable that the organisations, nowadays, are significantly adopting and implementing such carbon management applications to understand the level of emitted carbon in the business operation process.
Now, the concept of the eco-control aspect can be emerged here to determine the positive impact of management control on the environmental management activities of the organisations. First of all, the Eco-control system is nothing but a systematic management procedure, which is comprised of different important steps. These important steps are targeting, strategy development, decision support, data management, controlling, communication and implementation. An Eco-control system can be regarded as the implication of the strategic and financial control methods, which is considered in the environmental management process. It is an effective and efficient environmental sustainability management tool, which is utilised in different manufacturing units and production sites (Ruiz-Benitez et al., 2017). This is an important strategic approach, which helps to overcome different kinds of environmental sustainability issues, such as overcoming pollution issues, overcoming growing carbon emission issues, and overcoming GHG emission issues. Overall, the eco-controlling concept is entirely based on the financial controlling process. Already the example of Toyota Motor Company has been provided and it is identified how the operational management professionals and manufacturing teams use Kaizen management control system to eliminate the possibilities of the environmental sustainability issues. Overall, this is identified that the use of a management control system enhances a positive eco-control system and this positive eco-control system has a positive impact on the environment sustainability management aspect.
Formulation of the environmental sustainability goals as well as environmental sustainability targets is also an important consideration of enhanced environmental sustainability management aspect. Most importantly, the automated measurement and reporting of data on the carbon emission aspect generally help the organisations to understand the current sustainability position of the company. This data management and data analysis approach automatically assist the company to develop and formulate sustainable strategies for the future to overcome environmental challenges. Different kinds of advanced data management tools are integrated with the management control system (Wong et al., 2015). The example of Big Data information management tool can be considered here. It can help the organisations in gathering, arranging, organising, maintaining, interpreting and displaying a large volume of data. This particular approach can make life easier for all the involved stakeholders as this is a cost-effective and time-efficient approach. Overall, this particular approach can help an organisation in establishing fruitful future strategies thanks to the automated and appropriate measure of the gathered data and information.
The communication process is also an important aspect of the environmental performance management process, which can be enhanced through the application of a management control system. Every important stakeholder can get connected through some important management control devices to share knowledge and acknowledge each other on the concept of the development of desired activities (Tushar et al., 2018). Most importantly, the management of the modern production units always focuses on the application of advanced communication networks and devices integrated with the management control system tools to establish a concrete and sustainable strategy.
Last but not the least; different kinds of an advanced and large number of integrated environmental performance indicators are also being used by the operation management professionals of different firms in the applied management control system. This particular application helps the operation management professionals of different manufacturing plants to provide results on specific environment performance management indicators (Dubey et al., 2015). Some of the environmental performance management indicators are carbon footprint, water recycling, waste management, energy consumption, emission of greenhouse gas etc. Overall, these types of strategic approaches are highly supported by the management control system, which allows the companies to evaluate all the important environmental performance management indicators and develop the strategies accordingly.
Conclusion
The management control system is an important strategic system, which sources, gathers and utilises information to evaluate the performance of several organisational resources, such as financial resources, human resources, physical resources, and other tangible resources. This management control system always encourages the behaviour of the mentioned organisational resources to apply different kinds of organisational strategies. Modern-day firms are also using a management control system to reduce the carbon footprint during the business operation process. Different types of management control system approaches are adopted and implemented by the organisations in the business operation process.
The environmental performance of an organisation can be improved through the enhancement of the improvement of operational management activities through the application of Kaizen, carbon management tools, different data management tools, and advanced communication networks integrated with the modern-day data management control systems. The example of Toyota Motor Company can be considered in this part of the study to determine the fact that how this kaizen management control system helps a company in improving the environmental sustainability management of a company. Overall, this is identified that the use of a management control system enhances a positive eco-control system and this positive eco-control system has a positive impact on the environment sustainability management aspect.
References
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