Many environmental changes today affect companies and thus also controlling. Examples include advancing digitization and a stronger focus on sustainability. On the one hand, these trends have an impact on controlling, which we primarily examine in relation to digitization. On the other hand, controlling as an operational function, certain controlling instruments and controllers can also serve as drivers of organizational change processes.
We examine these diverse connections in our research focus on controlling and organizational change. For example, we address questions such as how controlling instruments can help organizational actors to break up long-established and sometimes rigid structures, how routine controlling processes can be changed and modernized, or how controlling can help to establish new institutional and business logics in individual organizations or in certain regions (e.g. emerging markets). We often use qualitative-empirical methods to address these questions, but sometimes also use research designs based on surveys or systematic literature analyses.

Example publications from this research focus:

• Individual responses to using management control practices for hybridizing public-sector organizations: evidence from an emerging country
• Integrating a new management accounting routine into a routine cluster: the role of interactions between multiple management accounting routines
• Management accounting as a political resource for enabling embedded agency
• Management Accounting Research on Africa
• Management accounting routines: a framework on their foundations