Sustainability and management control. Exploring and theorizing control patterns in large European firms

A growing body of literature argues that management control is essential in supporting an organization to become more sustainable. Nevertheless, skepticism has been raised about the existence of management controls in the context of sustainability in corporate practice and especially about their role in promoting sustainability within the organizations. Based on the management control framework of Malmi and Brown (2008), this paper explores empirically the extent to which large companies have developed a package of formal and informal management control mechanisms and theorizes on the observed sustainability control patterns. The results show that all researched companies deploy sustainability management controls. The paper identifies two distinct approaches in management control for sustainability: a focus on either formal or informal approaches. The insights and recommendations provided in this paper help organizations in translating their aspirations into their organization. The results also highlight the need for research to better understand the situations in which formal and informal management control for sustainability are or could be developed.