Management Control in Family Firms : the Influence of Family Involvement on Decision-Facilitating and Decision-Influencing Roles of Management Control Systems

Posch, Arthur (2012). Management Control in Family Firms : the Influence of Family Involvement on Decision-Facilitating and Decision-Influencing Roles of Management Control Systems. Wien: Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien

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This dissertation analyzes the effect of family involvement on management control systems (MCS). Despite their economic relevance, family firms are largely ignored in extant management accounting research. Drawing on the idiosyncrasies of family firms, this thesis argues in a theory-driven way that family involvement is a contingency factor that explains variation in MCS across firms. This thesis posits that family firms display significant differences compared to non-family firms with regard to both decision-facilitating and decision-influencing roles of MCS. Furthermore, the performance implications of MCS in family firms are also investigated. Drawing on survey data from 230 firms from a single industry in the German-speaking countries, this thesis provides empirical evidence for the difference between family and non-family firms with regard to MCS. The results thus underline the relevance of family involvement as an additional contingency factor that drives the design and use of MCS. In a second step, this thesis looks at the performance effects of MCS use in family firms and subsequently derives recommendations as to how MCS should be used in family firms. Generally speaking, the results reveal that the different MCS use of family firms compared to non-family firms does not necessarily exert a negative influence on performance. Therefore, the results of this dissertation contradict the common proposition that family firms could be more successful if they behaved more similarly to non-family firms (i. e. more professionally).

Item Type:	Book (Monograph)
Division/Institute:	03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Business Management > Institute for Accounting and Controlling > Managerial Accounting
UniBE Contributor:	Posch, Arthur
Subjects:	300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics
Publisher:	Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien
Language:	English
Submitter:	Lynn Carole Selhofer
Date Deposited:	17 Jul 2019 12:23
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 15:27
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/128451