ABSTRACT
Many of the themes in this book have directly or indirectly engaged with the issue of performance management and control in not-for-profi t (NFP) organisations. This is clearly a fruitful area of research and one that makes important contributions to our body of knowledge in this area, because although the topic of management control has attracted increasing attention in the management accounting literature (see Otley, Broadbent, & Berry, 1995; Langfi eld-Smith, 1997, 2005, 2007; Chenhall, 2003; Merchant & Otley, 2007; Berry, Coad, Harris, Otley, & Stringer, 2009 for reviews of such research), its focus has been primarily directed towards for-profi t organisations. While research on the similarities and differences between for-profi t and NFPs is vast (Heinrich, 2000), the implications for how control is enacted within a NFP context have rarely been explicitly considered, and the contribution of management accounting research in informing this debate has been limited.
