The Choice of Interactive Control Systems under Different Innovation Management Modes

This paper contributes to the recent levers of control (LOC) literature on the relationships between innovation and management accounting and control systems (MACS) by emphasising the importance of the choice by which individual MACS are selected for interactive use. Using survey data collected from 57 medium-sized Spanish firms, we find evidence supporting (1) the choice of individual MACS selected for interactive use is associated with a firm's innovation management mode (IMM), and (2) the level of product innovation output is influenced by whether or not IMM and interactive MACS feature similar cognitive models and whether the sophistication of the information contents provided by the interactive MACS responds to the priority needs perceived in the IMM. Our findings further indicate that similarity in patterns between IMM and MACS does not lead to a beneficial impact on the level of innovation outputs, suggesting instead that it may induce the replication of existing dysfunctional trends caused by innovation momentum. © 2009 European Accounting Association.