The role of the controller

Abstract: The concept of the business Controller, which in its present form is
related to financial and economic responsibilities within companies, is an
American concept that was introduced in the late 19th century. The concept
has since conquered the world and is by now a well-known apponitment. Still
there is no universal definition attributed to it, and this causes serious
confusion concerning what a Controller is actually supposed to do. We have
therefore
chosen to try to identify the role of the business Controller in American
companies and compare this to the role of the Swedish Controlller and
finally, explain any differences as well as the nature of the origin of
these differences. The research was based on an earlier study made on large
Swedish companies, from which we constructed a questionnaire that was
presented to representatives for large American companies. Next we
undertook
a series of interviews with knowledgeable Swedish Controllers in order to
obtain a deeper understanding of the differences identified, as well as to
ensure that our findings were accurate. Through our questionnaire we
learned
that American Controllers regard internal and external accounting and
budgeting as important tasks. Swedish Controllers on the other hand regards
reporting as the most important area. This does not imply that any of the
areas investigated are unimportant. It merely suggests that the areas are
prioritized differently. Nevertheless, all areas considered important by
the
respondents can be considered as quite traditional accounting tasks,
something we found somewhat contradictory to much of the current literature
on the subject, which advocates the view of a more strategic role
associsted
to the business Controller. Furthermore, we found differences concerning
desirable traits held by Swedish and American Controllers. For instance,
creativity and flexibility were considered important traits in Sweden
whilst
they were almost considered undesirable in the USA. At the same time,
Americans ranked leadership highly whilst the Swedes did not. However, it
also became clear that controllers in both countries have to be able to
process and analyze economic information and, perhaps even more
importantly,
be able to communicate this information throughout the organisatíon. Thus,
it has been clearly shown that, as well as there are similarities, there
are
indeed also significant differences in national and corporate cultures,
which is also the very reason why a consistent and international defintion
to attribute to the business Controller is hard to identify.