Background
Studying the relationship between strategy and Management Control Systems (MCS) is not a new phenomenon. The main purpose with the MCS has long been to attain the strategic goals that have been set for the organization. Scholars have therefore argued that MCS should be adapted in harmony with the strategy employed by the company. There exists however little empirical evidence to support this claim.
Problem
Recent studies shows that the largest problem companies’ face today is that
their MCS doesn’t focus enough on the organisations’ critical success
factors. This made us question whether companies choose MCS that
support their strategy. This study focuses on Management Control
Measures (MCM) as one dimension of the companies’ total MCS and on
the companies’ business strategy.
Purpose
The purpose was to investigate whether companies’ choose MCM that support the companies’ employed business strategy. Since measuring strategy and MCM at one point of time may result in that some companies may be in an adaptation phase of either strategy or MCS, where the MCS or MCM doesn’t support the business strategy. We were therefore also interested in investigating if the lack of adaptation between the companies’ MCM and their business strategy could be explained by changes in business strategy and/or MCM over the past two to three years.
