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The new era of knowledge economic arrived. Knowledge has become the most important strategic asset of the firms. Utilize effective knowledge management to enhance the knowledge in the organization is a key issue for firms to compete in the 21st century. How to share the knowledge among the business units in conglomerate is also the main factor of enterprise¡¦s synergy. To establish a measuring tool for performance of knowledge transfer promotes the competence of the conglomerate richly. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the conglomerate¡¦s diversification strategies , control management system and performance of knowledge transfer. The index of the measuring tool also be established for performance of knowledge transfer in this study. The empirical results are as follows : 1. There is obviously influence between knowledge transfer performance and types of diversification strategy. 2. There is not influence between control management system and types of diversification strategy.

The existing research around sustainability has traditionally had a reporting focus with less attention towards the controlling of a company. As more research has directed its attention towards the controlling perspective, the human interaction has not been substantially considered. In order to increase the understanding around sustainability implementation the purpose of this study is to investigate how controllers develop management control systems in order to incorporate sustainability within the company’s controlling process. By conducting an exploratory study with interviews of seven controllers with experience from sustainability implementation, rich empirical data is collected and analysed. The study is able to show how sustainability is being implemented through a basis of three fundamental parts: the person, the package and the process. The study has several findings; controllers try to deal with sustainability proactively, controllers implement sustainability differently depending on their background and sustainability is easier implemented if being treated like regular data. The study is contributing both practically as well as academically as it is able to identify and exemplify how Swedish controllers are implementing sustainability within the controlling process.

Proefschrift Universiteit van Amsterdam. / Met lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Nederlands en Duits.

Proefschrift Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. / Lit. opg. - Met een samenvatting in het Nederlands.

In 2014, Volkswagen (VW) became the only owner of Scania, acquiring full-control of the company (Pohl, 2017). Scania is the only truck manufacturer that has been able through long period of time to show black figures constantly. VW and Scania have two separate and well- established MACS, namely budgetary system at VW, while lean accounting and rolling forecast at Scania. After the acquisition, the two MACS have presumably been integrated to some extent, in one way or another. The differences in MACS can create barriers for integration and tension may arise. The broad topic of the thesis is management accounting and control challenges and consequences in post-acquisition phase. In previous research, scholars have identified a number of factors that are critical to facilitate the integration of MACS, among other things, the similarities regarding, corporate culture, style of management, and working methods. Otherwise, the subsidiary may choose to adopt one or more containment mechanisms to ease the tension between the two MACS. Our result is in line with Tillema and Van der Steen (2015) who have identified three mechanisms to deal with the tension, namely, colonizing, compromising, decoupling.

The current research is motivated by the controversy between the proponents and opponents of privatizing SOEs in LDCs concerning its impact on the MCSs designed and implemented in these companies. On the one hand, proponents expect privatization to foster the design and implementation of market-based, consensual and transparent MCSs. On the other hand, opponents are more critical about the ‘actual’ changes that privatization might entail to SOEs’ MCSs as they expect it to entail the design and implementation of non-transparent, coercive MCSs. When examined closely, this conflict was found to be rooted in the different theoretical perspectives adopted by each side. While proponents base their arguments, mostly, on ‘traditional’ agency and property-rights theories that underplay the role of structure in shaping the MCSs designed and implemented in privatized companies, many of the opponents base their arguments on neo-Marxist theories that underplay the role of agency in that process (namely labour process theory- LPT). The current research contributes to this debate through developing a power-informed theoretical model that acknowledges the role of both agency and structure in shaping the nature of the pre- and post-privatization MCSs designed and implemented in companies operating in LDCs. The model provides an attempt to develop the Hopper et al (2009) model through integrating into it a theory of power informed by the works of Lukes (1974 and 2005) and Gaventa (1980 and 2007) while adopting the integrative agency-structure approach suggested by Mahoney and Snyder (1999).Once developed, the model is used to guide the analysis of the relevant literature pertaining to Egypt’s supra-national and national power relations and structural factors throughout its state and market capitalism eras as a first step towards comparatively analysing the pre- and post-privatization power relations and MCSs manifesting in two Egyptian companies. The empirical data was mainly collected through conducting semi-structured interviews in the two companies and with some of the government officials involved in their privatization. Other sources of data include the companies’ internal records and financial reports, government publications, and newspapers. The comparative analysis shows how the power-informed model can help shed more light onto the nature of, and the dynamics of change in, MCSs transformations in LDCs; without having to abandon LPT as one of the main theoretical perspectives informing the analysis. While doing so, the nature of a company’s MCSs (be it coercive, consensual, or irrelevant) is found to reflect the power relations manifesting in that company (namely, powerful management, comparatively powerful management and labour, or powerful labour, respectively). Furthermore, as the comparative analysis shows, it is found that privatization is more likely to result in changing the nature of a SOE’s MCSs when it entails altering the power relations shaping these MCSs.

Abstract This thesis investigates how Finnish firms, as examples of Western firms, control and steer the operations of their subsidiaries in Russia and the Baltic countries and the role of accounting in the management control systems. The thesis consists of three essays, which focus on different aspects of the role of accounting in the management control systems. Even though the issues discussed in this thesis are probably not unique to the area of the former Soviet Union, the characteristics of business in this context highlight specific management control questions relating to organising and using power within management control systems. The first essay investigates the changing role of accounting in a knowledge transfer process between a head office and subsidiaries to show the importance of informal communication and cooperation in the development of accounting. Only after some time of intense informal cooperation and the development of social capital in the accounting-mediated knowledge transfer can more formal accounting controls can be relied on. The second essay illustrates how the central social position of an individual can be reproduced and how it affects accounting and formal reporting in the control system. The third essay investigates the role and power of an intermediate subsidiary in using accounting for controlling and steering the operations of its subsidiaries, when the intermediate acts between the subsidiaries and its own Western parent company. The intermediate can invoke the tensions between divergent social systems and thus use accounting signifiers according to its own needs, legitimating its existence despite the inflexibility the multilevel organizational structure may cause. Therefore, the whole thesis suggests that accounting plays an important role in integrating firms in very different contexts, but this can only happen with the help of more informal supportive structures and knowledgeable agents who utilise accounting. This is how accounting develops business thinking so that the practices adapted to the local demanding circumstances could also give something back to the parent companies.

För startupbolag är venturekapital (VC) ett populärt alternativ som extern finansiering, där VC- bolagen inte sällan tar en aktiv roll deras portföljbolag. Vidare indikerar tidigare forskning att startupbolag har ett mindre behov av Management Control Systems (MCS) samtidigt som MCS och affärsstrategi har en växelverkande relation. Studiens syfte är att ge ett kunskapstillskott kring huruvida förekomsten av VC påverkar startupsbolagens affärsstrategi samt MCS. En kvalitativ metod har genomförts med fyra intervjuer som bas för den empiriska sammanfattningen. Studiens resultat indikerar att VC ökar användningen av MCS för startupbolag. De faktorer som påverkar förändringens omfattning är företagsstorlek, investeringens storlek samt VC-bolagets involveringsgrad. De områden inom MCS som förändras främst är omfattningen av långsiktig planering samt användningen av finansiella mått. Det är stor variation avseende hur VC påverkar affärsstrategin. Vidare indikerar resultatet att förändringar inom startupbolag inte nödvändigtvis är initierade av VC-bolagen, utan ofta är ett naturligt steg när företaget växer.