A study of management control systems in multinational corporations : a Singapore perspective

Abstract

This study has been motivated by the increasing presence of multinational corporations (MNCs) in Singapore, coupled with the recent drive to develop our own MNCs. The purpose of this project is to investigate the management control systems adopted by MNCs in Singapore subsidiaries. Specifically, the aim is to see how the different types of interdependence and national cultures affect the design of management control systems. Any relationship between the control and performance evaluation approaches will also be described.

An extensive literature review is first carried out, upon which a framework is developed for the purpose of our research.

The study was done by utilising existing survey data collected for an ongoing research project on the management control systems used by foreign MNCs in Singapore (Chung and Gibbons, 1995). Our results show that different types of interdependence between units and different national cultures of parent companies do affect the design of management control systems. In addition, the use of certain types of control mechanisms also influences the amount of emphasis placed on various aspects of performance measures.