The point is not to bring to light past errors but to identify needed corrections to steer the corporation in the desired direction.
[7] In organisations undertaking a mix of diverse / unrelated activities (e.g. traditional conglomerates) simpler forms of financial control are more common and perhaps more effective.
[1] As Reufli and Sarrazin observed, the key issue with strategic control mechanisms is the need to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity.
[14] They observed a series of trade-offs between these extremes – financial controls being simpler and therefore cheaper and more flexible to operate, but providing less scope for co-ordination between components of an organisation, strategic planning being time-consuming and expensive to operate, but providing the greatest scope to push for maximum strategic advantage.
In the middle of this range, Goold and Campbell described strategic control as allowing firms to "balance competitive and financial ambitions".