Management Control Research: A Review of Current Developments

In this chapter, we provide an overview of current developments in management control research, looking both at method choices and thematic patterns. Traditionally, overview papers are based on what has been published over a specific period of time in a selection of leading journals. Our approach is slightly different. Rather than looking at what has been published, we want to see what people are currently working on, and to pick up on themes and trends that appear to define the contemporary research agenda of the field. As a point of departure, we choose the papers from the 2013 conference of the Management Control Association (MCA), held at Nyenrode Business University. The MCA conference has established itself as one of the main venues for management control researchers, and is known for its open-minded- ness regarding methodological positions and method choices. To get a richer perspective on the contemporary research agenda, we add a selection of papers that have been published in the period 2008–2012 and that appear to have a strong impact on ongoing research work. To identify these papers, we rely on Google Scholar for citation scores.1 The interesting thing about these scores is that they are not restricted to references in selected scholarly journals (as for instance Tompson’s ISI Web of Knowledge scores), but encompass all sources available on the internet — including unpublished working papers, conference proceedings and seminar presentations.