ABSTRACT
This chapter presents definition of management control systems (MCSs) by Anthony, Merchant and Van der Stede. MCSs are implemented with the management accounting tools. Although cultural controls are invisible, they play an important role in management control. As pointed out by Merchant and Van der Stede, it is in Japan that cultural controls work most effectively. MCSs as used by Merchant and Van der Stede clearly cover a broader scope than Anthony's treatment of the concept. Based on a point of view that MCSs have an influence on employee behavior, Merchant and Van der Stede include the whole management system proposed by Anthony. Also, Simons (1994) proposes another type of system. Simons takes four systems (diagnostic control systems, interactive control systems, beliefs systems, and boundary systems) as control systems, and advocates executing MC by these four systems. Finally, the chapter compares Malmi and Brown's ideas on MCSs with Merchant's model.
