From Control to Value Creation
This article reviews the research papers published on this issue, framing the topics within the research streams of the Management Control journal. In particular, this editorial starts with an overview of the recent evolution of the firm’s control system. The evolution is oriented toward an increasing integration, covering governance, audit, risk and performance. Also, the evolution is linked to an increasing external projection of the firm’s control system. The articles presented in the issue put into evidence this pattern and highlight the ways in which the firm’s control system contributes to the value creation process.
The first paper provides an interesting theoretical discussion of the firm as intelligent living being. By conceptually developing the analogy, the paper discusses how the concept of homeostasis can help interpret the firm’s control system, as aimed at preserving and fostering value creation. A group of three papers deals with the communication of the value created through external reporting. These papers highlight how the external reporting is used by a range of stakeholders to control the value created by the firm, where the concept of value develops from the financial perspective to the sustainability perspective. Two other papers study how the firm’s control system produces the information on costs and performance, used for internal decisional needs. The issue is closed by two papers investigating the risk management system. These papers highlight how digital technologies and big data can help treating information useful to control the firm’s relationships with external subjects.
Keywords: value, value creation, integrated control, GARP.
