Resilience-oriented management control systems: a systematic review of the relationships between organizational resilience and management control systems

Organizations regularly face serious challenges due to pandemics, recessions, and financial crises. One reason some organizations cope better than others may be that their management control systems (MCSs) more effectively foster organizational resilience. Despite considerable literature on MCSs and organizational resilience, there is a lack of research on the impact of an MCS’s use on organizational resilience. This study examines and bridges the literatures on MCSs and organizational resilience to illuminate how organizations can better cope with adversity. To identify potential relationships between management controls, MCSs, and organizational resilience, we systematically review the literature and perform a content analysis. We examine the relationships between organizational resilience measures, capabilities, and management controls. We propose the use of resilience-oriented management controls and discuss whether organizations can increase their resilience by building resilience-oriented MCSs. Based on Simons’s levers of control framework and Duchek’s capability-based conceptualization of organizational resilience, we develop a conceptual organizational resilience/MCS framework. Our study reveals relationships and gaps between the literatures on MCSs and organizational resilience and proposes avenues for future research. Our findings suggest that resilience-oriented MCSs are beneficial to organizational resilience.