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Modern intra- and inter-organizational arrangements require firms to cross boundaries, but this process represents a crucial and complex challenge, especially for organizations that face pluralistic tensions. Scholars still lack sufficient knowledge of how boundaries can be crossed and what kind of boundary management is necessary within pluralistic contexts. This paper aims to enrich the understanding of these issues by exploring how strategy maps can be mobilized and used as boundary objects to elicit boundary-spanning practices that foster cross-boundary collaboration in pluralistic organizations.

This paper employs the case study methodology to capture the dynamics of cross-boundary management elicited by the use of a strategy map within a pluralistic social/healthcare organizational context.

This study identifies four practices of boundary spanning (i.e. identifying and crossing problem boundaries, orchestrating collective responsibilities, acknowledging a common understanding of convergent values and goals, and evolving into action) in the analysed pluralistic context and investigates the conditions under which cross-boundary interactions can mobilize a shared zone of knowing via strategy maps.

This paper suggests a complex (and not linear) processual model of boundary management in pluralistic contexts in which the use of the strategy map mobilizes a dynamic of centrifugal and centripetal movements which engage plural actors in a shared site of collaborative knowing. The study contributes to a conceptualization of boundary management in pluralistic contexts as a progressive social accomplishment.

Scholars have recognised that an inherent ambiguity underlines the roles of controllers, as they navigate multiple expectations of various organisational counterparts, including the control-type needs of corporate top managers and the decision-making needs of business managers. Role ambiguity (RA) is a form of psychological distress leading to dysfunctional work-related outcomes (WROs); therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyse whether the use of performance measurement systems (PMSs) by controllers influences their RA and, in turn, their job satisfaction and organisational commitment.

This study used data collected from a survey of 158 controllers to investigate whether controllers’ diagnostic and interactive uses of PMSs affect their RA and, indirectly, organisational commitment and job satisfaction.

The results show that an interactive use of PMSs by controllers decreases their RA, with positive effects on their commitment and satisfaction. On the contrary, PMS diagnostic use has no significant influence on either RA or WROs.

This study contributes to the body of literature on the psychological effects of PMSs related to RA, providing further empirical evidence to suggest that the adoption of PMSs may decrease individuals’ RA and, in turn, increase their WROs. In particular, this study enriches the existing literature with two elements of novelty: focus on controllers’ role instead of that of popular managers and focus on the behavioural effects of the diagnostic and interactive uses of PMSs.

Although companies are increasingly embracing the sustainability discourse in their external reporting and disclosures, little is known about how management control systems support sustainability within organizations. This is unfortunate, given the important role that properly designed Sustainability Control Systems (SCS) may play in helping firms to better face their social and environmental responsibilities. Starting from these premises, the aim of this essay is twofold. On the one hand, we present a review of the emerging stream of research on sustainability and management control mechanisms, in order to identify and discuss the link between the two. On the other hand, we try to illustrate the main unaddressed issues in this literature as a premise to exploring one possible way to advance research in this area. Specifically, we make a call for a more holistic approach to the study of SCS, which considers also their organizational and cultural dimensions in addition to their technical properties. A framework for informing future work on the topic is proposed, based on the concept of ‘control package’ (Malmi & Brown, 2008; Sandelin, 2008) complemented with notions from the complementarity-based approach developed in organizational economics (Grandori & Furnari, 2008; Milgrom & Roberts, 1995). By enhancing our understanding on how SCS operate as a package, the application of our framework should allow researchers to develop better theory of how to design a range of controls to support organizational sustainability objectives, control sustainability activities, and drive sustainability performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the implementation of internal environmental management and voluntary environmental information is related to organisational change.

Organisational change literature provided a framework for the analysis of the materials which were collected through a mixed method. Data on internal environmental management were collected through a survey, while a quality disclosure index was used to assess the quality of the environmental voluntary disclosure. Interviews were used to enhance the quantitative results interpreted according to the four pathways proposed by Tilt (2006) and characterised by several levels of internal environmental management and voluntary disclosure.

The results indicated that companies implement more internal activities than external disclosure. Environmental planning and operational practices were the most important changes carried out. When environmental management accounting and environmental disclosure were also implemented, environmental aspects were more integrated within companies, thus revealing that a more structured integration of sustainability aspects within organisational values had taken place. The results underline the importance of primarily establishing a set of internal changes, driven by environmental planning, to promote organisational change.

The study presents a larger empirical analysis of the organisational change pathways followed by companies, showing similarities and differences among the four pathways. The results underline the importance of both dimensions for studying organisational changes. The framework of Tilt has been enriched, considering a more precise explanation of the internal aspects and adding the concept of the quality of disclosure as proxy to assess organisational change.

Organisational change is investigated through an extensive analysis of internal and external aspects and collecting quantitative and qualitative evidence. The analysis complements previous sustainability accounting literature focussed on the analysis of internal environmental management and external disclosure.

While prior control studies typically focus on organizations with an instrumental approach to corporate sustainability, this study concentrates on organizations with an integrative approach, as the latter is needed to address the grand challenge of sustainable development. As such organizations do not single out the financial objective as the dominant one, they pursue a hybrid mission. This study investigates how a control package can be designed that ensures the persistence of such a hybrid mission.

A case study is undertaken at a luxury hotel chain in which a financial and an environmental objective are continuously balanced. Self-determination theory is used to substantiate insights into how psychological need-supportive controls can be designed at all organizational levels.

This study highlights how controls are not only needed to direct staff behaviour towards the environmental objective but also to ensure that staff at all organizational levels prioritize the objectives in such way that the hybrid mission can be sustained. Besides structural differentiation and centralization of decision-making, the case organization designed need-supportive controls to foster staff's internalization of the environmental objective and value as well as of the integrative approach.

As the need-supportive socialization process fostered staff's integration of the environmental value, this study highlights the transformational potential of controls.

This study provides a unique account of a control package directing staff behaviour towards the balancing of multiple objectives.