Recurrent Attempts to Renovate Management Control Revisited through a Simons' Perspective

Three dimensions characterize a management control system: the nature of the involvement of operational managers, the degree of customization of the underlying tools and the relationship with the compensation policy. This characterization further formalizes the distinction between diagnostic and interactive control systems introduced by Simons (1995). It provides an interesting framework to discuss the recurrent attempts to renovate management control that followed the severe criticism of Johnson and Kaplan (1987). In this framework, information systems based on a strategic vision of the activity are representative of interactive control while value based management systems such as EVA are representative of diagnostic control. The strengths and weaknesses of each approach are discussed using the proposed taxonomy as a theoretical grid.