The Impact of National Culture on Mangement Control Systems: A Comparison of CEE and German-speaking countries

This dissertation aims at identifying whether or not national culture has an impact on the design of management control systems (MCS) and whether or not companies operating in different cultures should adapt their MCS to establish a fit between the system and local culture. Therefore, previous cross-cultural MCS research is critically reviewed. The findings of earlier studies are ambiguous (Chenhall, 2003; 2007). The dissertation identifies limitations of earlier studies that might influence the mixed results. In particular, the dependency on Hofstede’s taxonomy of cultural values and the great geographical distance, which is considered to be a surrogate for other factors like laws, competition, etc. are discussed. The second part of this dissertation presents the findings of a study conducted in Central and Eastern European (CEE) and German-speaking countries which tries to overcome the presented challenges. Contrary to previous studies, the cultural regions selected are located on one continent, have a common history, share common borders, and most of these countries even share a common (single) market. However, according to the Globe Study (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004), the two regions examined show significant differences. Data gathered from publicly listed companies in ten different countries through an online-survey are used for testing six hypotheses regarding differences in the application of incentive schemes that could be explained by different cultural settings. The findings based on 229 observations support three out of six hypotheses. Therefore, certain differences in incentive schemes between companies from the CEE and the German-speaking culture can be explained by cultural differences. This implies that companies operating in different cultural regions should consider cultural differences when implementing or transferring MCS to other cultural regions.