4 Conclusions
Mainstream management accounting and control systems research has typically focused upon a generic class of business to distil findings about factors affecting the design and operation of such systems. Over time more and more variables have been examined within contingency frameworks. The most commonly examined external variables include technology, market competition or hostility, environmental uncertainty, and national culture (Chenhall 2003; Otley 2016). The majorinternal variables are organizational size, structure, strategy, compensation systems, information systems, psychological variables (e.g., tolerance for ambiguity), employees’ participation in the control systems, market position, product life-cycle stage, and systems change (Chenhall 2003; Otley 2016). The most widely examined dependent variables are performance, performance measures, budgeting behaviour, management control system design and its use, effectiveness, job satisfaction, change in practices, and product innovation. Performance, effectiveness and design of systems are the major dependent variables used with financial performance being the most commonly used outcome variable (Otley 2016). However, there is evidence to suggest that family firms differ systematically from non-family firms across a range of these variables thereby suggesting that the design and operation of their management accounting and control systems should and will be different.
