The Impact of Management Control Systems - Strategy Interaction on Performance Management: A Case Study

Abstract

We study the interaction between management control systems and strategy and its impact on organisational performance considering the way in which multiple aspects of control systems and dimensions of context combine in a variety of ways to enhance performance. Our purpose is to investigate the relationship among management control systems, strategy and organisational performance in a particular company. The contribution of this study is that it upgrades the existing theory in that it does not only establish a relationship between strategy and management control systems, but also considers how this relationship impacts on organisational performance. The study shows that the combination of performance-driven behaviour and regular use of management control systems leads to improved results. The second contribution of the study is that it incorporates a wider range of controls, including informal controls as being equally important as formal controls, to provide a more comprehensive analysis, as opposed to the majority of prior studies focusing on a more limited range of controls. In this way, this paper contributes to the literature in terms of examination of the broader components of management control systems than was previously done.