In the Paper under the title "Strategic expansion – Guinness Nigeria, management accounting information and upper echelons" we explore how the decision to brew Guinness Stout outside the British Isles in the 1960s came about. Not least, Sir Alan Lennox-Boyd, the then Managing Director of Guinness, was a key player in this decision. So we are looking at the story from the perspective of upper echelons theory, where such strategic decisions are (partly) attributed to the top managers in charge. This makes sense, not least because Sir Lennox-Boyd was British Colonial Secretary before becoming Guinness' Managing Director.
However, Guinness' accountants also played a role in this decision. They helped to change the original decision to bottle Guinness in the respective location in favour of building a brewery. We interpret this role of management accounting information as an important but understudied moderator in the upper echelons theory of the relationship between top management characteristics and strategic decisions.

The study is available open access from Taylor & Francis Group: Full article: Strategic expansion – Guinness Nigeria, management accounting information and upper echelons (tandfonline.com), opens an external URL in a new window