Strategic Management Control: Successful Strategies Based on Dialogue and Collaboration

By Fredrik Nilsson and Carl-Johan Petri

Strategic management control differs from traditional management control in several important respects. First, it supports both strategy formulation and strategy implementation. Second, it is to a large extent based on non-financial information. Third, it deals with both the long and short term and supports not only tactical, but also strategic and operational decision-making. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, strategic management control is designed for, and adapted to, each organisation’s unique strategies.
In this context, the book emphasises the importance of dialogues. The authors argue that it is unwise to assume that decisions taken at the top of the organisation will automatically be executed and obeyed throughout the organisation. Instead, they highlight the importance of dialogue and collaboration, both between hierarchical levels within the organisation and between actors in the network. Such communication is essential to making management control processes both strategic and successful.
The book follows a clear structure, from the design of strategies to the everyday evaluation and discussion of performance and results. Though primarily intended for professionals working in strategy and management control at organisations, it will also benefit students and academics interested in strategy and management control.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Jun 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9783030386405

Book preview

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

F. Nilsson et al. (eds.)Strategic Management ControlManagement for Professionalshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38640-5_1

1. Strategic Management Control in Theory and Practice

Fredrik Nilsson¹  , Carl-Johan Petri²   and Alf Westelius²  

(1)

Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

(2)

Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

Fredrik Nilsson (Corresponding author)

Email: [e-mail]

Carl-Johan Petri

Email: [e-mail]

Alf Westelius

Email: [e-mail]

1.1 Introduction

Strategic management control, which we focus on in this book, differs from traditional management control in several important respects. First, strategic management control supports both strategy formulation and strategy implementation. Second, strategic management control is to a large extent based on non-financial information. Third, strategic management control supports not only tactical decision-making but also strategic and operational decision-making and acting. Fourth, strategic management control is designed for, and adapted to, the organisation’s unique strategies.

In practice, however, it can be difficult to differentiate between strategic management control and traditional management control. Of course, some organisations may implement a strategic management control system consistent with the idealised version presented in textbooks. Yet most organisations apply both strategic and more traditional management tools in their control systems.

For at least 50 years, the concept of management control has been linked to strategy. Originally, and as portrayed by Anthony (1965) in his well-known management control framework, discussed by among others Otley (1994) and Nilsson et al. (2011), the link between strategy and control was mainly related to the budgeting process. Strategic objectives were thus translated into financial numbers in the budget and in the follow-up reports. For a long time, this view of management control was dominant in academia and in practice (ibid). However, by today’s standards and as discussed in the literature (see for example Otley 1994, 1999; Simons 1995; Nilsson and Rapp 2005; Nilsson et al. 2011), the framework has several drawbacks such as:

The focus on implementing strategies and not on the formulation of strategies.

The weak relationship between budget follow-up and the execution of strategies.

The emphasis on financial information that is too highly aggregated to support decision-making at lower organisational levels.

In the late 1980s and during the 1990s the drawbacks of how management control was practiced started to become more and more obvious. They were most clearly manifested in the so-called Relevance Lost debate—initiated by Thomas Johnson and Robert Kaplan in 1987—claiming that management control (accounting) was not very useful anymore for decision-making (e.g. to implement strategies) (Johnson and Kaplan 1987). This important and very influential debate, as well as its consequences for accounting research and its practices, has been widely discussed (see for example Bromwich and Bhimani 1994; Nilsson et al. 2011; Nilsson and Stockenstrand 2015). As shown by these authors, and others, the critique by Johnson and Kaplan resulted in a lot of effort being put into making management control a relevant tool for strategic management. Below, we will give some examples of that, based on insights from this stream of literature.

One very clear characteristic of the efforts to improve management control was the focus on finding tools to translate strategies into information supporting the daily activities of managers and co-workers (ibid). The balanced scorecard is probably the best-known solution to this fundamental problem (Kaplan and Norton 1992; Olve et al. 1997). By using non-financial information, the strategy—and how it should be executed—could be related to customer relations, internal business processes and learning and growth activities (Kaplan and Norton 1996; Olve et al. 2003). This exercise also clearly shows that different strategies should lead to different design and use of the management control system.

Using models like the balanced scorecard also showed that it was not enough that management control was used only for strategy implementation. It had much more potential than that. Following up the strategy, and above all the dialogue between managers and co-workers, is also a good starting point to reconsider the strategy (Kaplan and Norton 2001; Olve et al. 2003). At the most basic and fundamental level, the dialogue can focus on how—and if—the chosen strategy (for example, differentiated high quality products) leads to value creation for the owners (for example, return on equity). Perhaps such a dialogue will show that the quality level of the products does not lead to the price premium that is required to cover the costs of successfully pursuing the strategy in our example. This type of analysis, based on management control information, is important in strategic management (i.e. formulation and implementation of strategies) (Simons 1995; Nilsson et al. 2011). That insight was crucial when developing the balanced scorecard from having been mainly a measurement system to be a tool for strategic management (Kaplan and Norton 2001). When introducing strategy maps—a tool for visualising critical success factors of a strategy and their relationships to one another and to value creation—the importance of dialogue became obvious (Kaplan and Norton 2004). A strategy map more or less forces managers and co-workers to discuss what activities create value and how the value-creating process can be improved by using management control information (Petri and Olve 2014a, b).

In sum, based on our insights, experiences and the short overview above, we conclude that management control practices underwent rapid development during the 1990s. Today, few scholars and practitioners question the importance and value of well-functioning strategic management control and the fact that it should be designed and used in line with the strategy being pursued. At the same time, it is easy to underestimate the difficulties of developing and maintaining a control system with these characteristics. Perhaps such a control system is even taken for granted? If that is the case, the risk is that the dialogues may not get the management attention they should have. That could lead to a control system that loses its strategic orientation and therefore does not seize opportunities to develop the business. That would be most unfortunate in a world with many big challenges and where demands for creativity and development are more insistent than ever.

Following this line of reasoning, the overall objective of the book is to show how and why strategic management control is important to organisations. We will highlight important theoretical contributions and discuss how they can be used in practice. Our ambition in anthologising these contributions into a comprehensive picture of the current state of the field and its central developing trends is to produce a useful book for students, practitioners and scholars. The book, which emphasises the challenges involved in achieving successful strategic management control, aims to present a critical analysis rather than a simplified solution to problems that are difficult to solve. Clearly, we do not subscribe to the view that the practice of strategic management control consists of more or less meaningless rituals, with only ceremonial implications. On the contrary, our ambition is to emphasise the opportunities afforded by strategic management control, while still recognising its difficulties and challenges. The book is loosely structured around the planning and follow-up processes (in that order) in strategic management control.

Chapter 2 by Thomas Falk, Carl-Johan Petri, Jan Roy and Åke Walldius is titled Illustrating an organisation’s strategy as a map. The authors describe how the strategy map—a development of the balanced scorecard—can be used to facilitate communication and dialogue on organisational strategy. In part, the chapter is based on the traditional interpretation of what a strategy map is (according to Kaplan and Norton) and in part on other experiences that give the readers additional insights. First, using references to cinema studies, the chapter deepens our understanding of picture-based narratives. Second, the chapter presents a comprehensive description, using a strategy map, of the consequences of digitalisation for companies and organisations. Third, the chapter presents an empirical overview of how the Swedish amusement group—Parks and Resorts Scandinavia (that owns Gröna Lund Amusement Park, Kolmården Wildlife Park, Aquaria Water Museum, Furuviksparken Zoo and Amusement Park, and Skara Sommarland Water Park)—uses strategy maps to facilitate dialogue about the group’s strategic direction and ensures that the key performance indicators in the management control system are based in the strategy.

Chapter 3 by Alf Westelius and Johnny Lind is titled Painting the relevant organisation. The authors discuss how it is increasingly less self-evident which entity should be the focus of strategic management control. Although the relevant organisation may be the whole, or some parts, of an organisation, it may also be a somewhat broader entity such as a joint venture, an imaginary (i.e. virtual) organisation, a network, a value constellation or a partnership. The chapter discusses all these, less obvious, possibilities. Because different people are likely to have different views on what constitutes the relevant entity, an essential aspect of strategic management control is establishing and maintaining the dialogue on associations and boundaries. The dialogue may involve a strong party, perhaps aiming to inspect and influence external parties (e.g. suppliers and customers), but can also be conducted among more equal partners. The authors conclude that people who want to take an active management role, or who want to include others in the exercise of management control, should learn how to paint a convincing picture of what they view as the relevant entity to control (or the relevant parties that should cooperate in jointly controlling their collaboration).

Chapter 4 by Erik Jannesson and Fredrik Nilsson is titled Planning for control and evaluation. The authors address organisational control and evaluation—the fundamental elements of strategic management control. The literature often discusses the difficulties associated with exercising control and making evaluations. One difficulty is achieving a consensus on which metrics to use, which decisions are needed to achieve the desired results, and how responsibility should be allocated. The authors emphasise that consensus on these matters can be achieved by talking about intended and realised strategies, possible future strategies and the development of business activities. The organisation’s various control tools and the relationships among them provide the framework (i.e. the control package or the control mix) for such dialogues. Moreover, the authors address the advantages of coherent planning and evaluation—known as integrated control—and how new IT solutions create possibilities for achieving integrated control.

Chapter 5 by Christian Ax, Mathias Cöster, and Einar Iveroth is titled Strategic pricing: The relationship between strategy, price models, and product cost. Although pricing is an area of strategic importance, the academic business literature has not addressed the topic to any great extent. In their examination of the linkage between business models, price models and cost models, the authors emphasise that the organisation’s business strategy should be the starting point for the development of its pricing strategy and its choice of a relevant cost model. They state that the second starting point is the business model—how the organisation plans to convert its strategy to value for its customers, co-workers, and owners. The translation of the goals in the business strategy to specific prices, informed by accurate calculations of the cost of the product, is a difficult task that requires a structure—a price model—to support the work. The chapter presents a meta-model for analysing and understanding the characteristics of various price models: the price model equaliser. One aim of this metamodel is to describe and compare various price models in order to ensure that they are consistent with the organisation’s strategies. Choices regarding the business model and the price model must also be consistent with these strategies. Therefore, it is also important to choose a costing model that takes explicit account of the customers’ willingness to pay. As a complement to the price model equaliser, the chapter presents a customer-oriented costing model: the Value Creation Model (VCM).

Chapter 6 by Bino Catasús and Mikael Cäker is titled Controlling and being controlled. The authors are interested in the dialogue about control, and address the challenges of encouraging middle managers and co-workers to agree on and work together towards local goals that are simultaneously acceptable to them and to senior executives. One trend that can hamper the dialogue between various decision-makers in an organisation is that control has become very extensive and complex. Many organisations are overloaded by control processes. Some researchers even describe this as an overdose of control. In such situations, control with many different goals can result in confusion and loss of focus. While ideas about management control packages and integrated control may be easy to formulate, it is much more difficult to achieve their intended results in practice. Although today we have the technical resources to manage large amounts of data, those resources do not necessarily direct the way forward. The authors argue that useful dialogues require a common understanding of what the numbers mean and propose that the greatest challenge is to create a dialogue on goals and strategies that reflects the diversity of opinions and ideas in the organisation.

Chapter 7 by Cecilia Gullberg is titled The controller’s role in management control dialogues. The author identifies the controller as a key actor in creating strategic management control. She outlines the breadth of the controller role, ranging from bookkeeper to business partner with many facets in between. The author suggests that the business partner is likely to be more involved in management control dialogues, and that, overall, much could be gained from a shift in this direction. Specifically, she focuses on the controller’s (business partner’s) role in initiating, sustaining and leading dialogues with operations managers. Dialogues between controllers and local managers, the author claims, serve to alert managers of problems, to find solutions and to challenge established ways of running operations, thereby contributing to a more strategic dimension of the organisation’s management control. The role of the controller in such dialogues largely revolves around connecting numbers, operations and people, which entails various social processes, such as educating, listening, persuading and inspiring. Therefore, the author argues, the controller needs to understand not only accounting but also the specificities of the local operations, the experiences of the local managers—as well as the more global values and strategies of the organisation. To some extent, this could be realised through rather subtle considerations of how to communicate and exchange information.

Chapter 8 by Nils-Göran Olve is titled Management control as strategic dialogue—a memoir. The author is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar and influencer. His ideas—developed over more than 50 years and widely published—have affected the thoughts of practitioners in general and the authors of this book in particular. His chapter is therefore an important backdrop to the first 7 chapters of the book. It gives the reader valuable insights to some important origins of and inspirations for many of the thoughts and developments presented in the book. It is also a fascinating journey through the history of management control—from the well-known framework developed by Robert Anthony in the 1960s (Anthony 1965), to the balanced scorecard (Kaplan and Norton 1992) and even to more recent ‘innovations’ like management control packages (Malmi and Brown 2008). The reader will notice that Olve, and many of his colleagues, pointed out early on the importance of dialogues between managers and co-workers. In a decentralized organisation, they strongly believed that the dialogue would contribute to coordination and unified action. It is therefore not surprising that he became very interested in the balanced scorecard and became a thought-leader not only in the development of that tool but also in strategic management control more generally. With his background and achievements in the field, it is very fitting that the book ends with an account based upon his deep insights and personal reflections on how the field has developed and why. This will also show the reader that many of the fundamentals of strategic management control have been around for a long time.

In Chapter 9 Conclusions, the editors summarise the book’s chapters and highlight some of their important themes and ideas.

As mentioned above, the book is loosely structured according to the logic of an organisation’s planning and follow-up processes—from the development and visualisation of the organisation’s strategies to the controller’s work in monitoring whether intended actions have been taken and the goals have been reached. Chapters 2–7 present the links in this chain of words to action. They also emphasise the importance of dialogue in strategic management control. The authors do not think co-workers and partners will agree, submissively, to decisions taken only at the top of the organisational hierarchy. Instead, the authors repeatedly emphasise the importance of dialogue between the various hierarchical levels and among the actors in the network. Their overall conclusion is that dialogue and interaction are the most important factors of success in creating a strategic management control system.

We now turn to these seven chapters. In the next chapter, we learn more about the characteristics of strategic management control in a narrative that explains how strategies can be documented and described in a way that lays the groundwork for dialogue and that ensures that the performance indicators in the planning and follow-up processes are strategically relevant.

References

Anthony, Robert N. 1965. Planning and Control Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Boston: Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration.

Bromwich, Michael, and Bhimani, Alnoor. 1994. Management Accounting: Pathways to Progress. London: CIMA.

Johnson, H. Thomas, and Kaplan, Robert S. 1987. Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Kaplan, Robert S., and Norton, David P. 1992. The balanced scorecard—Measures that drive performance. Harvard Business Review70(1), 71–79.

Kaplan, Robert S., and Norton, David P. 1996. The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Kaplan, Robert S., and Norton, David P. 2001. The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.Crossref

Kaplan, Robert S., and Norton, David P. 2004. Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Malmi, Teemu, and Brown, David A. 2008. Management control systems as a package—Opportunities, challenges and research directions. Management Accounting Research19(4), 287–300.Crossref

Nilsson, Fredrik, Olve, Nils-Göran, and Parment, Anders. 2011. Controlling for Competitiveness - Strategy Formulation and Implementation through Management Control. Malmö and Copenhagen: Liber and Copenhagen Business School Press.

Nilsson, Fredrik, and Rapp, Birger. 2005. Understanding Competitive Advantage: The Importance of Strategic Congruence and Integrated Control. Heidelberg: Springer.

Nilsson, Fredrik, and Stockenstrand, Anna-Karin. 2015. Financial Accounting and Management Control: The Tensions and Conflicts Between Uniformity and Uniqueness. Cham: Springer International Publishing Switzerland.

Olve, Nils-Göran,