Information and the transnational SME controller

Abstract

One of the issues that face the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) when expanding is the ‘control’ issue and this paper investigates and presents preliminary evidence of ‘controlling’ or ‘management accounting’ practice in a transnational SME. Wibsey, the site of the case, is now a small group of companies that have expanded from a U.K. base into 10 European countries. This expansion has posed complex problems, which have increased the information requirements of the SME. The contextual issues of complexity and resulting challenges for the transnational organization in its management accounting, information and control systems are considered. Wibsey uses traditional management accounting as the basis of supporting decision-making in the group and a lower level of information need is reported, in contrast to Dent (1996) (Dent, J. F., 1996. Global competition: challenges for management accounting and control,Management Accounting Research , 7(2), 247–269), because the group chooses to maintain a traditional ‘accounting-led’ evaluation system in controlling and evaluating its transnational operations.