Management Accounting and Control Systems and Strategy: A Theoretical Framework for Future Researches

The organisational change necessarily requires an adaptation of the company's information structure, namely the Management Accounting and Control Systems (MACSs). Considering that these systems should be designed according to the defined strategies and in order to assist the managers in the decision-making process, we propose, with this work, and from a broad literature review, to analyse the MACS concept and the elements that characterise it, so we can be able to identify and characterise the existing system in any company. Among other aspects, MACS information outputs will be analysed in terms of the style of use, its nature and the type of decision. In an attempt to broaden the scope of MACS functions, the paper reviews the MACS literature and provides a theoretical framework for studying the operationalization of MACS. The results obtained indicate that, to operationalise the MACS concept, we can resort to the way the information used is managed and characterised, establishing three categories and six different dimensions. Theoretically, this framework allows us to characterise the existing MACS and to analyse its impact on the company's strategy. In the future, we intend to develop some case studies to analyse its impact on the companies' internationalisation strategy.