Management Control Systems in Research and Development Organisations

R&D units deal with different environments, purposes, goals, and employees compared to non-R&D units. The R&D activity is a learning process, and a non-repetitive task to contribute new knowledge, hence it need different management control systems (MCS). This study develops a MCS framework that consists of four core elements; Desired Ends, Actors, Control Implementation, and Control Tools. The Desired Ends has two components namely Yardstick and Direction. The Actors consists of five components; Behavioural, Motivational, Domination, Power, and Decision Space. The Control Implementation has two components; Control Types and Timing, where the Control Types has Formal and Informal types, and Timing of implementation contains three stages as Input, Process and Output. The framework then is investigated in government R&D units in Indonesia by using a descriptive case study research. The practice of MCS was found to be an archaic and centralised system. It may be influenced by the nature of the R&D, historical, political, and cultural background. The use of control types, tolls and dimension were found to be different along input, process and output control.

Autorentext

Dr. Parulian Silaen (Ully) is an academic at University of Wollongong, Australia and supervises Master research and PhD students. He was a controller in many industries; vessel and aircraft producer, and BPPT (a government unit in Indonesia). He was also a consultant in MCS. His research area are MCS, Public Sector and Accountability.

Klappentext

R&D units have different characteristics compare to non-R&D units. The R&D activity is a learning process, and a non-repetitive task which contributes to new knowledge, hence it needs different Management Control Systems (MCS). This book presents a new MCS framework that consists of four core elements: Desired Ends, Actors, Control Implementation, and Control Tools. The Desired Ends has two components; Yardstick and Direction. The Actors consists of five components; Behavioural, Motivational, Domination, Power and Decision Space. The Control Implementation has two components; Control Types and Timing, where the Control Types has both Formal and Informal types, and Timing has three stages; Input, Process and Output. The Control Tools has two components; Dimension and Value. The framework is then investigated in government R&D units in Indonesia using descriptive case study research. The practice of MCS was found to be an archaic and centralised system. It may be influenced by the nature of the R&D as well as historical, political, and cultural background. The use of control types, tools and dimension was found to be different in input, process and output control.