Definition (1):
Special alert controls refer to management actions undertaken to thoroughly, and often very rapidly, reconsider a firm’s strategy because of a sudden, unexpected event.
Definition (2):
A business requires ready-made mechanisms for assessing its position in the case of occurrence of sudden events like market spikes, product recalls, and natural disasters. A special alert control allows a business to reconsider the relevancy of its strategy considering these new sudden events. It will help a business to prepare itself how it will manage these special alerts with priorities for keeping, procedures for following, and tools for use.
Definition (3):
"A special alert control is the need to thoroughly, and often rapidly, reconsider the firm's basis strategy based on a sudden, unexpected event."
Basically, businesses follow four types of strategic controls. It is one of those types. The analysts and researchers of recent corporate history marked some surprises with potentially high impacts such as chemical spills, natural disasters, hostile takeovers, product defects, plane crashes, etc.
According to Pearce and Robinson, special alert controls should be conducted during the implementation of strategy only, but Preble suggests that as these controls are actually a subset of strategic surveillance they should be performed throughout the whole strategic management process.