Managing sustainable development with management control systems: A literature review

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

The purpose of this article is to synthesize evidence of management control systems (MCS) that are employed by organizations to enforce sustainable development (SD). We aim at suggesting a roadmap for coherent research.For this, we conduct a 'systematic' review based on an initial sample of 12,139 sources between 1988 and 2013. We then discuss 83 empirical studies in natural and social sciences. The MCS framework of Malmi and Brown (2008) ensures a comprehensive understanding of SD enforcement in practice.We identify diverse types of controls that organizations use to enforce SD. Our findings problematize examples where the MCS is unable to appropriately address all relevant aspects of SD. We find that organizations prefer to manage and control smaller aspects of SD, such as environmental responsibility. Social responsibility is addressed less frequently, and only few organizations implement a sustainable MCS (SMCS) that addresses all aspects of SD. Classic 'cybernetic' controls are the preferred choice in MCS, but organizations have advanced beyond them during the past decade.Our main contribution is a structured map of contemporary research that points to areas where our understanding of SMCSs is still scarce, such as their interplay with contextual factors and the resulting, long-term performance effects.

Original languageEnglish
JournalEuropean Management Journal
Volume34
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)158-171
Number of pages14
ISSN0263-2373
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.04.2016
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • Control, Corporate social responsibility, Literature review, Management control system, Management practice, Sustainability, Sustainable development
  • Management studies

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. The Creation of the Concept through the Interaction of Philosophy with Science and Art
  2. How leaders’ diversity beliefs alter the impact of faultlines on team functioning
  3. Emotion Prediction by Facial Expressions in Human-Computer Interfaces
  4. A hybrid actuator modelling and hysteresis effect identification in camless internal combustion engines control
  5. How can employment relations in global value networks be managed towards social responsibility?
  6. Giving is a question of time: response times and contributions to an environmental public good
  7. Performance measurement systems
  8. Plants, Androids and Operators
  9. Das Problem der Unbestimmtheit des Rechts
  10. Anatomical and neuromuscular variables strongly predict maximum knee extension torque in healthy men
  11. How to specify the structure of substituted blade-like zigzag diamondoids
  12. "alterNature" in Drew Hayden Taylor’s The Berlin Blues. Construction and De(con)struction of Contested Spaces
  13. Modernisierung und Partizipation
  14. The effect of storage medium on the elution of monomers from composite materials
  15. Diskussionsinhalte der 10. Hamburger Auditing and Control Conference am 20./21.09.2012
  16. Theorizing path dependence
  17. Mechanical performance optimization of similar thin AA 7075‐T6 sheets produced by refill friction stir spot welding
  18. Dynamics of species diversity and composition of herbaceous vegetation in fenced and unfenced plots
  19. Plant diversity increases spatio-temporal niche complementarity in plant-pollinator interactions
  20. An Experimental Study on Corrupt Actions
  21. Comparison of different in vitro tests for biocompatibility screening of Mg alloys
  22. Ansätze zu einer vernetzten Unternehmensplanung
  23. Harmonisierung der Standards zur Klimaberichterstattung?