ABSTRACT
Management is essentially a practical activity and managers are essentially concerned with real-life practical events. So far in this book we have barely touched the real world; we have been discussing how to take decisions, how to plan, how to give instructions, but all these activities are just talking or putting things down on paper. Checking results, which is the subject of this chapter, is the step where managers inspect the real live world to see if it really has reacted in the way they wanted; has the new factory, hitherto only a plan on a piece of paper, really been built, has sales turnover really increased by 10 per cent and are the customers’ cheques safely in the bank?
