The integration of risk into management control systems: towards a deeper understanding across multiple levels of analysis

The integration of risk into management control has recently received increased attention in the management accounting and control literature. Much of this research has focused on the organizational and individual actor level. However, some studies suggest that the integration of risk into the organizational control package may equally be influenced by forces operating at other levels of analysis– including the economic and political level and the organizational field level. In this guest editorial for the special issue on “Courageous Risk Governance: Enabling Resilience, Autonomy, and New Thinking,” I therefore discuss how our collective understanding of the integration of risk into management control could be enhanced by research at multiple levels of analysis. The papers included in this special issue show that when this integration is successfully managed, organizations can achieve valuable outcomes, such as increased resilience. For both practitioners and academics, future research on such integration therefore seems fruitful and necessary. This article provides ideas for particularly relevant questions about this integration and for theories that can guide such research.