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This chapter reviews empirical studies into the relationship between management control, strategy and sustainability.

The review explores the theoretical frameworks and models used in previous empirical research as well as the research questions and methods applied to empirically explore this emerging research area.

Even if a growing body of empirical research has emerged over the last decade, our knowledge of how companies design or use management control to support sustainability strategy appears to be limited, providing considerable scope for further research.

This review structures the state of our empirical knowledge in the area of management control, strategy and sustainability and makes suggestions for future research paths.

The purpose of this article is to explore how the strategic change following a corporate takeover impacted the nature and extent of use of the firm's management control systems (MCS), in particular its performance measurement system (PMS).

This paper uses Michael Porter's theory of competitive advantage and Robert Simons' levers of control framework to illustrate and interpret changes in the PMS within an Australian multinational subsidiary following its takeover by an overseas corporation. To provide empirical evidence on this issue, face‐to‐face interviews and archival data are used.

The findings reveal that the takeover resulted in changes in the firm's competitive forces (threat of potential entrants, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitute products or services, bargaining power of suppliers, and rivalry among existing firms), and therefore the firm altered its strategy to change the rules of competition in its favor. Corresponding to the strategic change, the PMS was affected, with specific implications on Simons' four levers of control: interactive, diagnostic, beliefs, and boundary systems.

The findings suggest that a corporate takeover is an important phase for any organization, as it involves a change in the competitive environment and strategy, and needs to be facilitated by a change in the MCS to create and sustain superior performance.

This case study demonstrates how interactive and beliefs systems work together with diagnostic and boundary systems in the context of change in an organization. Past research devoted to strategic change and MCS has not documented this phenomenon.

To illuminate how the alignment of HRM control and business strategy affects firm performance.

Empirical data are collected from computer and peripheral equipment industries via questionnaire. The measures include business strategy, HRM control, and performance. The major analytical technique used in this study is moderated hierarchical regression analysis.

The value of any approach to HRM control can be augmented or diminished by simultaneously matching the HRM to the type of business strategy adopted by firms.

It is unknown how the selection of industries and geographical areas would affect this study's findings.

Firms should use an appropriate combination of HRM control systems aligned with their strategic goals in order to improve business performance.

This paper identifies the match between HRM control and business strategy and offers practical help to a firm when they are used in combination effectively.

The aim of this paper is to confront the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) with Simons’ levers of control model and to discuss its role in the various phases of the strategic process. The authors examine the role of the BSC as a tool of interactive and diagnostic control by making a distinction between its design phase and its phase of use.

An action research approach, based on two cases, was used to investigate the role of the balanced scorecard in strategic processes.

The results show that the BSC generates a process of collective elucidation favouring the forming of emergent strategies and a process of control of the change favouring the collective representations on the strategy. The BSC thus seems to be a relevant tool for interactive control during its implementation stage. On the other hand, the authors’ observations also show the failure of the BSC as a system of diagnostic control and of interactive control during its using stage. Ultimately, it is shown that the model of Simons provides the BSC with a relevant theoretical framework to clarify the practice of strategic control.

The study highlights the interest of field studies, and more particularly, processuals and longitudinal approaches, in management accounting research.

The study of two cases underlines the strategic contribution of the BSC by highlighting its role in building a strategy.

The field study allows us to observe how the design of a management control tool such as the BSC occurs during the strategy‐forming phase.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the emphases given to the levers of control when monitoring product development (PD) are combined with each other, with the type of PD strategy formation and with the degree of innovativeness experienced by the firm. Moreover, the paper aims at identifying those configurations that are equifinal and superior to others in terms of PD and organizational performance.

Data (n = 468) are collected through a structure written questionnaire and analyzed through cluster analysis. Robustness tests investigate the stability of the results across different cluster method choices.

The paper unravels three configurations: A framing firms cluster, a fatalist firms cluster and a meticulous firms cluster. The first and the third cluster outperform the second cluster in terms of performance.

Limitations of the paper relate to the possible response bias, the measurement of the variables, the subjectivity in cluster method choices and the static and non-causal nature of results. Future studies are called to validate the findings.

Firms with a partially intended and partially emergent PD strategy formation process and high innovativeness should place high emphasis to the PD beliefs and boundary systems. Firms with a prevailing intended PD strategy formation and a medium innovativeness should emphasize diagnostic and interactive control systems for PD.

In contrast to previous studies, this paper addresses the peculiarities of one specific control problem, i.e. the conflicting control demands that management has to address in PD.

This paper aims to investigate the law and logic mechanism of management control matching pattern and company strategy aggressiveness under different strategies by textual analysis, based on the empirical data of Chinese A-share listed companies during the period from 2010 to 2018. Additional analyses further investigate the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty and R&D intensity on the relationship between management control matching type and strategy aggressiveness. The conclusion can help relevant departments to develop management control theory and method system with Chinese characteristics and provide theoretical reference for the matching mode of dual control.

This paper uses the text analysis method. The main explanatory variables are analyzed using the computer SQL Server database software through the relevant text of the board of directors report in the company annual report. Other financial data came from the CSMAR database, excluding ST and PT and companies with missing data, and 16,902 samples were finally obtained. This paper conducted statistical analysis through Stata12.

This paper shows that the matching pattern between formal and informal control is divided into three types. They have different impacts on strategy aggressiveness. Specifically, consistent matching type II significantly positively influences the aggressiveness of offensive strategy. Consistent matching type I significantly positively influences the aggressiveness of defensive strategy. Complementary matching type I significantly positively influences the aggressiveness of analytical strategy. Additional analyses find that compared with non-high-tech companies, high-tech companies have more significant influence on the relationship between management control matching pattern and company strategic aggressiveness. And compared with other two “strategy-control” matching patterns, both environmental uncertainty and product innovation have more significant influence on the relationship between consistent matching II and offensive strategy aggressiveness.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper divides the formal and informal control matching patterns of management control into three categories for the first time. It examines the relationship between the formal and informal control matching of management accounting and the degree of strategy aggressiveness. The conclusion provides new empirical evidence to promote the effective implementation of development strategies for companies. It can help relevant departments to develop management control theory and method systems with Chinese characteristics and provide theoretical references for the matching mode of dual control.

Management is constantly looking for ways to show how exactly the competitive advantage can be enhanced to achieve the desired results. As such, control mechanisms that are designed to ensure that the desired results are achieved play an important part in the successful implementation of a business strategy, which is why, in this study, the authors analyze how formal and informal control levels are deduced from the marketing decisions that operationalize the organizational strategy.

The authors conducted a cross-section survey among 301 marketing managers. To determine which types of strategies are prevalent, the authors performed a hierarchical cluster analysis using the IBM SPSS Statistics 24 software and then constructed an ANOVA table to see whether there are differences in the characteristics of the different clusters. To determine the configuration of marketing control across strategy typologies, the authors conducted a mean difference test, aligning marketing control mechanisms with the strategies under study, significantly changing the intensity levels from one to another.

It is worth emphasizing that higher levels of control are related to prospector strategic business units (SBUs) and that informal control was significantly more prevalent than formal control for all the strategy typologies the authors' studied.

This research provides empirical evidence to gain a better understanding of the role marketing decisions play on formal and informal control mechanisms.

The aim of this study is to examine whether the relationship between knowledge management (KM) strategy and firm performance is contingent on human resource management (HRM) control systems.

Surveys were collected in computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing industries in Taiwan. A total of 111 presidents returned usable questionnaires.

When firms emphasize personalization strategy, the use of behavior control will enhance firm performance. In contrast, when firms emphasize codification strategy, the use of output control will make firm performance better. If personalization and codification strategy were emphasized simultaneously, firms would not use single HRM control system to better performance.

First, the use of a self‐rating performance measure may constitute a limitation of the study. Second, this study is confined to a limited scope of control system. Third, perhaps the most obvious limitation is inherent to the selected research methodology that the one‐time data resemble a snapshot. Finally, it is not known how the selection of industries and geographical areas affect this study's findings.

Results from this study suggest that managers can leverage their best performance by matching the HRM control system to a particular KM strategy.

This study contributes to the knowledge about the importance of HRM control for KM methods. The firm's HRM control systems can be expected to contribute significantly to KM‐performance. Understanding how an organization can use its control systems to support KM will help firms sustain their competitive advantage.

Thruster point assembly mechanism (TPAM) of the electric propulsion system allows to adjust the thrust vector, so that the thrust vector is directed to the satellite center of gravity (COG) during the satellite on-orbit working period. In this way the impact of disturbance torque caused by deviation of the thrust vector from the satellite COG during thruster ignition can be decreased. Therefore, the control accuracy of satellite is influenced directly by the control accuracy of TPAM. On the other hand, the on-orbit application of TPAM is restricted to the on-orbit computer resource. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to design a control strategy for TPAM, and the strategy should not only be able to control the TPAM precisely but also be easily implemented by the on-board computer.

First, the structure and work principle of TPAM are discussed, and the mathematical model based on D-H coordinate system is built for it. Then the fitting methods are utilized to design the control strategy of TPAM. Absolute position fitting-based control strategy and relative position fitting-based control strategy are designed, and the least squares algorithm is introduced for parameter selection.

Simulations and tests are provided for the TPAM. Compared with the state-of-the-art PD controller, the proposed control strategy shows smaller overshoot and more simple realization. The experiment results are matched with the simulation results and both the experiment and simulation results show the validity of the proposed control strategies.

The designed control strategies can be used for the TPAM of some satellite’s electric propulsion system.

The mathematical model of the TPAM based on D-H coordinate system is given. The absolute position fitting-based control strategy and relative position fitting-based control strategy are proposed. Compared with existing methods, the two control strategies have more simple structure and smaller amount of computations. Furthermore, the relative position fitting-based control strategy achieves high precision with simple structure.

This article integrates strategy mapping, risk management and management control into a risk‐based approach to strategy execution. It uses strategy mapping as a tool to visually depict the firm's strategy and then assess its risks. Based on this risk assessment, the firm's management control system is designed to manage those risks which are seen to have the greatest probability to negatively impact firm profitability. The proposed framework can be used on a stand‐alone basis or be used to complement Kaplan and Norton's work on strategy mapping.

This article draws from the confluence of the risk management, management control, and strategy mapping literatures to illustrate how firms can improve their handling of risk.

Strategy mapping is an effective tool to identify risks, while Simons' Levers of Control provides an effective alternative to manage the risks identified.

A firm's future profitability depends on its ability to identify and manage risk. Given that firms only profit when they successfully manage risk, the design and application of its management control system must flow from an assessment of the risks assumed in its strategy. The primary advantage of an integrated risk‐based management control system is that it allows managers, in real time, to steer the firm towards the good things that were outlined in its strategy and away from any bad things.

The article extends Kaplan and Norton's work by proposing strategy mapping as a tool to identify and then to help manage risks.