MANAGEMENT CONTROL SYSTEMS - Make or Break?

Abstract: Due to the increase in M&A’s more implementations are conducted, a focus for any implementation is to have the company’s control system in place throughout the whole organization, including the new parts. Even though there is an increase in implementations of MCS the existing research in this field is lacking. There are studies showing influencing factors on corporation, culture being the main factor but it is unclear if this influence extend to implementation processes and especially MCS with their high amount of structure. To answer the research question “Can culture be the main part that makes or breaks implementation of management control systems?” a case study of an implementation will be used and information from that case will be put against theories on management control systems and culture’s influence on corporations. The conclusions drawn in this thesis can show that MCS are influenced by culture, the most affected part being personnel control. Depending on the case culture can break the implementation of MCS, especially when culture is not handled during the implementation.