A Taxonomy of Management Controls in Management Control Systems Research

Abstract

Research on management control systems has recognized that multiple management controls operate together in business practices. Also, some frameworks that combine various management controls together have been developed to capture business practices. However, research dealing with a combination of management controls, which explicitly explains each management control and how they are combined, is lacking. In this paper, a review of several recent-year-developed works that deal with constructing management control systems frameworks will be presented to highlight these shortcomings, specifically: (1) unclear explanations about the concept of management controls and management control systems, (2) ambiguous relationships between management controls, and (3) not considering management controls comprehensively in a framework. Also, considering that various definitions for management controls and management control systems exist, a single definition will be proposed as a premise of this paper. A list of 40 management controls will be made, followed by a taxonomy of management controls, based on methods used to capture business practices in the existing research. Management controls will be classified into six variables: environment, technology, organizational structure, use of management control systems, culture, and MAS. Relationships between management controls, relationships between variables and management controls, and treatment of some special management controls, will be discussed. Finally, how this paper overcomes the shortcomings of existing work and how it refines existing control frameworks and theory will be noted.