Controlling is a discipline within the field of Management Sciences, but it is also, and above all, an essential corporate function in the decision-making process.
The management controller is neither an operator, nor a manager, nor a decision-maker. But he or she is responsible for setting up and ensuring the smooth running of an information system that facilitates management forecasting and decision-making, helps steer operations, and critically assesses the results obtained, with a view to improving performance.
Management control is essentially concerned with the formal aspects of organizational control, using mainly (but not exclusively) accounting and financial tools, such as budgetary control and management charts.
Implementing management control implies investment in an information system, which is only conceivable in companies of a certain size (a small craft business has no management control department...), which reinforces other, more informal control mechanisms.