【正文】
s attention on those items in which actual performance significantly differs from the standard. Because key success factors shift in type and number, accounting revises control reports when necessary. Accounting also varies the control period covered by the control report to enpass a period in which management can take useful remedial action. In addition, accounting disseminates control reports in a timely fashion to give management adequate time to act before the issuance of the next report. Managers perform effectively when they attain the goals and objectives set by the budget. With respect to profits, managers succeed by the degree to which revenues continually exceed expenses. In applying the following simple formula, managers, especially those in operations, realize that they exercise more control over expenses than they do over revenue. While they cannot predict the timing and volume of actual sales, they can determine the utilization rate of most of their resources, that is, they can influence the cost side. Hence, the evaluation of management39。s role is to feedforwarda futuristic vision of where the pany is going and how it is to get there, and to make clear decisions coordinating and directing employee activities. Management also oversees the development of procedures to collect, record, and evaluate , effective management controls results from leading people by force of personality and through persuasion。s actions by paring the actual results of business outes to predetermined standards of success. In this way management identifies the strengths it needs to maximize, and the weaknesses it seeks to rectify. This process of evaluation and remedy is called cost control. Cost control is a continuous process that begins with the proposed annual budget. The budget helps: (1) to anize and coordinate production, and the selling, distribution, service, and administrative functions。 COST CONTROL Roger J. AbiNader Reference for Business, Encyclopedia of Business, 2nd ed. Cost control, also known as cost management or cost containment, is a broad set of cost accountingmethods and management techniques with the mon goal of improving business costefficiency by reducing costs, or at least restricting their rate of growth. Businesses use cost control methods to monitor, evaluate, and ultimately enhance the efficiency of specific areas, such as departments, divisions, or product lines, within their operations. During the 1990s cost control initiatives received paramount attention from corporate America. Often taking the form of corporate restructuring, divestmentof peripheral activities, mass layoffs,or outsourcing,cost control strategies were seen as necessary to preserve— or boost— corporate profits and to m