Content and Process Approaches to Studying Strategy and Management Control Systems

This chapter draws on the distinction between content and process approaches to help develop understanding of existing strategy-based MCS research and provide a unifying perspective for thinking about a future research agenda.

Abstract

Abstract This chapter is concerned with developing our understanding of the role of management control systems (MCS) in formulating and implementing strategy. Strategy has become a dominant influence in the study of organizations. Researchers in areas such as economics (Milgrom and Roberts 1992; Seth and Thomas 1994), human resource management (Miller 1991; Kochan and Osterman 1994), information technology (IT) (Grover et al. 1997), and organizational behaviour (Knights and Morgan 1991; Rowe et al. 1994; Rouleau and Seguin 1995) all seek to understand the ways in which their disciplines assist in understanding how managers use strategy to achieve desired outcomes.