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This paper examines the linkages between the ethics and management control literatures and suggests some potentially fruitful areas for future research and for integration in the classroom.

We review topics in the ethics and management control literatures organizing them around the six modules used in the accounting ethics course taught at the University of Southern California: (a) professional standards, (b) distinguishing right from wrong, (c) understanding why (good) people do bad things, (d) getting employees to behave ethically (corporate ethics programs), (e) getting people to speak up when they see something wrong taking place (Giving Voice to Values), and (f) whistleblowing (the last resort).

While we find many topics where ethics and management control are concerned with similar issues, there are very few papers that approach these topics from the two perspectives.

We provide an overview of topics where ethics and management control overlap, and highlight the need for greater convergence between the two literatures. By linking MCS and ethics, organizations can provide a framework to promote behavior that both contributes to the achievement of the organization’s objectives and also follows ethical principles. We comment on what may happen when ethics and management control diverge, and discuss controls that can promote a strong ethical climate.

To elicit the views of Ken Merchant regarding management control and performance.

An interview with Ken Merchant before his keynote speech during the lustrum congress of the Dutch Controllers Institute in November 2004.

Provides an overview of the pros and cons of present performance‐measurement techniques and discusses the possible future directions performance measurement and management control may take.

Of interest to academics and professionals in the field of performance measurement and management.

This paper discusses how to choose a measure or set of measures for the purposes of evaluating and rewarding general managers' performances.

The paper describes a set of criteria that is useful for evaluating any measure or set of measures. Then it applies the criteria to an evaluation of three measurement alternatives in common use at general management organization levels: market measures, accounting measures, and combinations of measures.

The paper shows that all of the measurement alternatives fail to satisfy one or more of the evaluation criteria and, hence, lead to less than optimal outcomes. But it also shows that some alternatives are better than others in specific situations.

While comprehensive sets of evaluation criteria have been applied to financial accounting choice issues, this is the first such approach in management accounting. This approach can lead to improved performance measurement system choices. It can also be used to guide future research because the analysis also reveals major gaps in our knowledge about the qualities of performance measures in common use.

Surveys the field research literature in management accounting and control (MAC) published in the period 1984‐1992. Proposes a definition of field research and compares the 82 published works that meet this definition with respect to their motivations, research designs and presentation formats. The comparison reveals the tremendous diversity among the field research publications. Evaluates the methods and contributions of this research ‐ field researchers usually choose interesting, relevant topics but many of the works have weaknesses in research design, data presentation and interpretation of findings. Concludes with some observations on the costs, risks, and potential payoffs of field research.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the general failure of management accounting research to be useful for practitioners.

The paper discusses the causes and consequences of the problem, and possible remedies.

The causes of the problem, and hence also the remedies, are related to choice of topics, research design, and writing and dissemination of findings; researchers are forced into choices that lead to less useful research by the research evaluation standards used by the major accounting journals and university professor evaluation practices.

While this general problem of lack of research usefulness has been discussed at some length in other areas of management, the issue has not received much attention in the management accounting community, other than with a few calls for more field research. However, getting out into the field more to do research addresses only one part of this important failure.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study designed to understand how involved controllers are in management decision processes, what causes more or less involvement in those processes, and whether involvement is significantly associate with performance.

To test the research propositions developed from a review of prior literature, data were collected from large Italian corporations using a questionnaire survey.

The results show that most of the controllers are at least somewhat involved in management decision processes, and some are highly involved. A complex set of factors determine the extent and breadth of controller involvement. Controller involvement in either strategic decisions, operating decisions, or both types of decisions is positively related to some situational variables, including capital intensity, operating interdependency, line managers' financial competence, formalization of strategic planning and budgeting processes. It is negatively related to the use of controller positions as training for line roles. Overall, controller involvement was found to be positively associated with performance.

This study provides support for some prior research findings and some extension of prior theory. Some findings were not consistent with expectations. This study was based on a small sample – 17 organizations; it used some crude measures and scales; and the findings can be generalized reliably only to the population studied here – large Italian industrial firms. More research is needed for further tests and explorations of these findings.

This research supports modern advice given to involve controllers highly in management decision‐making processes, but it also refines that advice by showing where high involvement is more (or less) desirable.

These results provide some useful support of prior findings and some modifications and extensions that further our understanding in this area of importance both to researchers and practitioners.

Attempts to establish a decision‐making model by which multinational enterprises (MNEs) front‐end financial target can be evaluated and determined. Explains and defines the financial range. Identifies their strategic concerns in order to do this. Continues by exploring the pattern of front‐end financial target variation and the process of its determination, constructing an international joint venture investment supply‐demand model. Elaborates upon how contingency factors in international operations exert direct impact on this matter and gives some considerations for future research.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.