Empirical Management Control Reserach—An Overview and Future Directions

Abstract

Companies use management control systems to implement the strategy and to ensure that all employees work toward the company’s objectives. Management control systems consist of formal (e.g., incentive- and monitoring systems), as well as informal control practices (e.g., employee selection, corporate culture). We provide an overview of the state-of-the art of the empirical management control literature and discuss it along three different lines. First, we show which management control practices exist and summarize what research has found for these practices in isolation. In the second part, we discuss how contingency factors influence the use and effectiveness of management control practices. In the third part we discuss interdependencies among the different control practices. In each of these parts we discuss existing research gaps. In the final part of our paper, we give an outlook of how the trend towards a knowledge society as well as artificial intelligence and big data will shape management control research in the future.