Management by Exception

The concept of management by exception ( Run by exception ) refers to a management technique in which leave the parent governing bodies, the completion of routine cases, the employees responsible for autonomous decision and the own decision reserved only for exceptional cases.

Concept

Employees work independently, as long as no -tolerance conditions or unforeseen events occur. It sets out objectives, target values ​​and evaluation standards. In addition, the success criteria are selected and determined the control information. Nominal and are constantly compared and performed variance analysis.

Prerequisite for the introduction of management by exception is the presence of the appropriate information, control and reporting systems that signal the defined exception. In the company operational goals must be known. The responsibilities must be clearly defined. All stakeholders need to know the goals and Abweichtoleranzen, responsibilities and escalations.

Pros and Cons

Benefits for the supervisor is the most extensive relief for routine tasks and low control costs, since employees within the areas of competence make independent decisions. The supervisor must have their employees working outside their area of ​​competence hold back.

Employees can act flexibly in their area of ​​expertise and rely on exceptional decisions to their superiors. But you can usually have their skills do not improve and may be challenged. By limiting the employee to routine work responsibility and initiative are impaired. For each executive, this means that the distribution of decision-making authority between their employees and their finely regulated and must be adapted systematically. At the same time it is their job to provide additional staff training to improve both their skills and to increase the opportunities for delegation of tasks.

Disadvantages for superiors arise from the fact that only intervened when the target is not reached, or the success criteria are not met. Resourceful employees can therefore escape sooner or later go about to make variations to the original destination to disguise the supervisor to the negative reactions of this. This can be largely circumvented by an efficient information, monitoring or reporting system because the information is the staff took the opportunity to change / manipulate on the way to the boss.

Another disadvantage of this management concept is that employee motivation is not promoted enough, as the supervisor only learns of negative deviations. The same applies if the "interesting" cases are handled only by the supervisor and remain the routine work of the employees.