Management control for sustainability: Towards integrated systems

IF 4.2 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Management Accounting Research Pub Date : 2022-03-01 DOI:10.1016/j.mar.2021.100777

Peter Beusch , Jane Elisabeth Frisk , Magnus Rosén , William Dilla

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引用次数: 17

Abstract

Companies struggle to integrate sustainability into their corporate strategy and implement it in their business activities. To examine this issue, we develop an extended version of Gond et al.’s (2012) integration typology that considers all four of Simons’s (1994, 1995) levers of control. We then present a longitudinal study of the efforts made by a multi-national industrial firm to align its management control system and sustainability control system in an integrated sustainability strategy. Our results provide three insights into control system integration for sustainability. First, intensive dialogues among managers at different organizational levels and in different organizational functions mitigate challenges to the technical and organizational integration of sustainability along a firm’s value chain. Second, the degree to which the firm’s strategic-level managers focus on external sustainability drivers influences how well the firm develops and markets sustainability-related products and services. Finally, a committed CEO and strategic-level management can avoid marginalizing sustainability by communicating their beliefs about it through intensive dialogues across management levels. Our results support the position that a firm can manage sustainability by making incremental changes in management control practices.

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可持续发展的管理控制:迈向综合系统

公司努力将可持续发展纳入其公司战略，并在其业务活动中实施。为了研究这个问题，我们开发了Gond等人(2012)的集成类型学的扩展版本，该类型学考虑了Simons(1994,1995)的所有四个控制杠杆。然后，我们对一家跨国工业公司在综合可持续发展战略中调整其管理控制系统和可持续性控制系统所做的努力进行了纵向研究。我们的研究结果为可持续性控制系统集成提供了三个见解。首先，不同组织层次和不同组织职能的管理者之间的深入对话减轻了企业价值链上可持续发展的技术和组织整合的挑战。其次，公司的战略层面管理者对外部可持续性驱动因素的关注程度会影响公司开发和销售与可持续性相关的产品和服务的程度。最后，一个坚定的CEO和战略层面的管理层可以避免边缘化的可持续发展，通过沟通他们的信念，在管理层面的密集对话。我们的研究结果支持这样的观点，即企业可以通过在管理控制实践中进行渐进式变革来管理可持续性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Management Accounting Research Multiple-

CiteScore

7.10

自引率

4.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： Management Accounting Research aims to serve as a vehicle for publishing original research in the field of management accounting. Its contributions include case studies, field work, and other empirical research, analytical modelling, scholarly papers, distinguished review articles, comments, and notes. It provides an international forum for the dissemination of research, with papers written by prestigious international authors discussing and analysing management accounting in many different parts of the world.