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Introduction

Management control is a key feature within the Finance & Accounting (F&A) domain, assuring that strategies are implemented as intended by means of translating high-level objectives into actionable devices and systems that change the behavior of an organization. Management controls include all the devices and systems that are used to ensure that behaviors and decisions are consistent with the organization’s objectives and strategies and include devices such as financial and non-financial information, administrative systems, and cultural controls. As such management control is strongly defined by the technological platforms that provide a multiplicity of information. A core assumption is accordingly that information and systems drive behavior, and behavior drives information and systems.

This course provides the students with an understanding of the conceptual management control frameworks and allows interpretations of practical phenomena as patterned symptoms of larger constructs, i.e., to see beyond problem situations and conceptualize the interrelatedness of symptoms and evidence emerging from different organizational domains. The aim is to enhance the student’s ability to apply management control frameworks in real-life situations and be able to understand the meaning and intentions of the frameworks and critically evaluate them in practice.

This course addresses the knowledge and skills necessary to fulfill a Controller or Chief Financial Officer (CFO) role. 

Course content

The course combines management control analytical frameworks and broader theoretical conceptualizations. Course topics will typically include, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Core analytical frameworks such as Malmi and Brown’s (2008) Management control package, Simons’ (1994) Levers of control framework, and Ferreira and Otley’s (2009) Performance management framework. These frameworks provide both practical guidance and a structured and systematic approach to how management control is, and can be, executed in modern organizations.
• Agency theory and transaction cost economics as a way of understanding the relationships between principals (owners) and agents (managers) and issues of delegation and monitoring. This relates to how organizations are structured and organized to make decisions in the face of various economic and behavioral factors.
• Contingency theory and the understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to management control. Effective practices depend on the unique circumstances of each organization, and its environment and management controls need to align with this.
• Institutional theory. Neo-institutional theories and dynamic routines as platforms for new ways of working and their management control implications (e.g., the use of AI, agile teams, local information systems). In addition, the concepts of institutional logics and institutional work provide tools to understand the underlying belief systems, values, norms, and rules that guide individuals and organizations in their decision-making and how these logics are maintained, changed, disrupted, and created.
• Structuration theory and behavioral theories include how organizational systems of rules guide behavior and emphasizes the interplay between structure and agency and offers insight into how digitalization in organizations is both shaped by and shapes social structures, norms, and individual agency.
• Legitimization theories, governance, and stakeholder approaches towards the restructuring and change of management control for environmental sustainability, the circular economy, and societal Grand Challenges (e.g., implementation of UN-SDGs in organizations, anchoring of measurement and control concepts in creative or knowledge-based enterprises and entities, corporate digital responsibility).
• Critical perspectives such as actor-network theories and their application to digital transformation of management control in specific industries (e.g., health care, municipalities, regional agencies, maritime industries).