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A Review of West Management Control Research

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Enterprise Management Control Systems in China

Part of the book series: Understanding China ((UNCHI))

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Abstract

The evolution of MCS in the West dates back to 1965 when Robert Anthony from Harvard University published his book Planning and control systems: a framework for analysis, this marked the beginning of the use of management control systems in West organizations [1]. After that, management control left its footstep in ages, from the mass production of prosperity in the United States in 1960s, to the lean manufacturing and quality management mode which promoted the rise of economy in Japan in 1990s, and to the latest global competition and innovation strategy-oriented. Flamholtz and Randle [2] pointed out that management control is very important for the growth of an organization. The west experience in Management Control Systems tells us that management control is essential in the organization’s growth and hence can be used for the development of Chinese economy as well. In the planned economy period, the Chinese government could manage the entire arrangement of control. However, with the evolutions of the economy and changes in the environment, the operation mode of enterprises has completely changed. Enterprises need to apply scientific management control to deal with a series of challenges such as discontinuous, seditious, non-linear and high frequency change and global competition in the twenty-first century. However, the management control research and practice in China is still lagging behind due to the lack of attention from the government, academics and other stakeholders. We run a simple test with the keyword management control in the Chinese CNKI, finding only 24 CSSCI indexed paper, 10 of which is in the Internal Control. In China, the awareness of internal control is far more popular than management control, but management control is the core of internal control from the perspective of their scope.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In CNKI, the keywords “internal control”, the time window for 1970–2010 years were retrieved, and screened by 2010–2011 version of the CSSCI standard for internal control, obtained 417 articles. The same time window, with the keyword “management control” retrieval, 24 articles for management control. The same time window, and then with the keyword “management control” and “internal control” search, access to internal control and management control of 10 references. This paper is not on the management control of all content areas by retrieval.

  2. 2.

    The internal control from the perspective of control subjects within the organization can be divided into board control, management control and employee control, management control more localized in from the angle of management, pay close attention to the strategy implementation process control perspective, internal control is an important part of 2002( Zhang Xianzhi “establish the enterprise internal management control system framework ” in China, young financial cost of annual meeting of academic research innovation award winning paper).

  3. 3.

    These journals came from different database, we didn’t offer the correspondence between the journals and the databases and the details of databases, but only listed the databases’ names.

  4. 4.

    Chenhall [7] regarded that Managerial Accounting meant the practice of Budgetary Accounting, Cost Accounting and etc., and that Managerial Accounting System was the system used by Managerial accounting. Management Control System was a broad concept, which involved Managerial Accounting System and other Control system.

  5. 5.

    We used the latest of international journals rankings of ABDC (Australian Business Deans Council, www.abdc.edu.au) in 2010 as a reference. The ABDC is a national council comprising Deans, Heads and Directors of Australian University business faculties and schools. According to the ABDC, the international journals were classified into A*, A, B and C, and A* or A journals were the highest level and highest authority ones.

  6. 6.

    Merchant [13] didn’t mention the Cultural Control in “Control of Management” (1982, Sloan Management Review), but added it in Merchant [14].

  7. 7.

    The others included simulation and etc.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Accounting, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Dalian, China

    Xianzhi Zhang

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Zhang, X. (2014). A Review of West Management Control Research. In: Enterprise Management Control Systems in China. Understanding China. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54715-7_4

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