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Sustainability integration in management control systems: evidence from a developing country

Udani Chathurika Edirisinghe et al.

Journal of Management Control2025https://doi.org/10.1007/s00187-025-00395-8article
AJG 2ABDC A
Weight
0.37

Abstract

This study explores how strategic approaches to sustainability issues would determine the integration between Management Controls Systems (MCS) and Sustainability Control Systems (SCS). Although existing literature has focused on developing SCSs, these systems remain decoupled from MCSs used for strategic management purposes. More specifically, this study seeks to respond to the call by Gond (Management Accounting Research 23(3):205–223, 2012) by exploring the missing link to integrating regular MCS with SCS. This engagement-based study has used multiple case analyses of manufacturing companies in Sri Lanka. Data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with the senior managers and a document analysis of publicly available information. The study identifies four types of control configurations: (i) Symbolic Compliance, (ii) Lean Accommodative, (iii) Dynamic Adaptive, and (iv) Sustainability-driven Comprehensive, depending upon the company’s strategic approach to sustainability in the spectrum of proactive and reactive. A company characterised by a proactive strategic approach has strongly integrated control systems while having complex attributes. In contrast, reactive companies’ SCSs remain decoupled from MCSs with simple control attributes. When companies fall in the middle (accommodative), they may either have a combination of strong integration with simple attributes or weak integration with complex attributes. This paper provides new scientific insights based on empirical evidence from a developing country on how the strategic approach of the organisation is associated with the extent of sustainability integration. The typologies suggested in the paper would allow managers and practitioners to identify boundary conditions for integrating sustainability into the strategy. This paper contributes to the growing literature on the complexity of control systems and their association with strategic sustainability approaches and control integration under a single framework. The originality of this study also lies in its attempt to examine the sustainability integration of control systems in a developing country context.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s00187-025-00395-8

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@article{udani2025,
  title        = {{Sustainability integration in management control systems: evidence from a developing country}},
  author       = {Udani Chathurika Edirisinghe et al.},
  journal      = {Journal of Management Control},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s00187-025-00395-8},
}

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Evidence weight

0.37

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06
M · momentum0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.