Does business strategy and management control system fit determine performance?

Abstract

Purpose This study examines the relationship between business strategy, management control system (MCS) type and performance. Does the alignment of organisation business strategy and MCS fresult in better performance?

Design/methodology/approach This study draws on the business strategy and MCS type literature to identify business strategies and MCS types. A scoring method was used to identify business strategy types and cluster analysis to identify MCS types from a sample of 80 firms and 621 firm-years of data. Analysis of variance was used analyse the differences.

Findings Four types of MCS were identified and were labelled clan, adhocracy, market and hierarchy. The sample was split into defender, analyser, prospector and reactor strategies. The results showed defender strategies performed better with hierarchy or market type MCSs while prospector strategies performed better with clan or adhocracy MCS types. Analysers performed acceptably with all MCS types.

Practical implications The results of this study suggest that organisations should align their business strategy with a certain MCS type to achieve good performance. Also, alignment of top management and business strategy is supported as the top management properties differ between the MCS types.

Originality/value This research contributes to the management control and strategy literature by demonstrating how the alignment between organisation business strategy and organisation-level MCS type determines organisational performance. The results suggest that differing business strategies yield better performance when aligned with the appropriate management controls represented by an MCS type.