Differences in Management Control System from the Teachers’ Perspective: A cross-sectional interview study of Public and Private Primary Schools

Abstract: Purpose: The Swedish primary education consists of public and private schools, where a comprehensive voucher system surrounds them. The different types of organizations present the debate of whether the different school management objectives, create an advantage over the other. Henceforth, principals are responsible to implement such management of the schools. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to explore the teachers’ perspective on the current Management Control System at their public or private school. Herewith, identify differences and similarities between the public and the private primary schools' Management Control System. Methodology: The methodology is based on an abductive approach, where it combines an inductive approach that allows us to attribute meaning to the studied event and a deductive approach that refers to the literature that has been studied before the data collection. Theoretical Review: This study adopts the Malmi and Brown (2008) Management Control System as a package framework. Hence, within each control, we have developed hypotheses that directly link the literature to the questions being studied. Empirical Findings: The data were collected from semi-structured interviews, the interviews were conducted with six teachers, four teachers in two public schools and two teachers in two private schools. Conclusions The findings reflected some differences in the Management Control System between the public and private schools. Differences were in Cultural control, where public schools emphasize more on the school values and beliefs. Also, the Cybernetic control reflected that in the private schools there is an absence of autonomy on the budget allocation. Regarding similarities, in the Planning control principals encourage involvement in the planning, Reward and Compensation is absent in both types of schools, and Administrative control reflected similar autonomy in personalizing the national curriculum.