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Companies must no longer just report on corporate sustainability (CS) performance but also demonstrate that they are aligning their strategies with sustainability. However, suitable management control systems (MCS) are required to implement a sustainability strategy. Thereby, sustainability reporting (SR) can also be employed for control purposes. On the other hand, existing MCS can be used to develop SR that goes beyond accountability. Accordingly, this paper explores how this interplay can be designed.

For the study, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with persons from ATX and DAX companies. Since the interplay should be examined from a holistic control perspective, the authors used the MCS package of Malmi and Brown as an analysis framework.

Nowadays, merely focusing on reporting is too narrow a view. It is therefore not surprising that the investigation was able to reveal various possible linkages between MCS and SR that span the full range of the MCS package of Malmi and Brown.

Future research should also consider non-listed companies to investigate potential differences and take a closer look at the proposed reciprocal nature of the interplay.

The findings expand the knowledge of how companies can use SR for control purposes and how existing MCS can help develop a reporting that goes beyond accountability.

The study contributes by highlighting the potential of SR to control CS performance from a holistic MCS perspective and likewise the impact of existing MCS on reporting. In addition, different theoretical perspectives are used to explain why the interplay can be designed differently in practice.

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate whether the transition from a family business to a non‐family business affects the institutionalisation of management accounting.

This paper is based on an online survey among all large and medium‐sized Austrian firms. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were used to test the impact of the level of family influence on aspects of the institutionalisation of management accounting. Firm size is included as the main control variable.

A lower level of influence from the controlling family was found to be correlated with the institutionalisation and intensification of management accounting in medium‐sized firms. For large firms, such a linear relationship could not be drawn. The level of education of management accountants was inversely correlated with the level of family influence in both large and medium‐sized firms.

Further research into the reasons, underlying drivers and inter‐organisational promoters of management accounting change in family businesses is needed. Furthermore, the organisational impacts of the transition from family businesses to non‐family businesses deserve further investigation.

A framework for assessing the organisational effects of the transition from family businesses to non‐family businesses is provided. The empirical results on the impact of the transition on the institutionalisation of management accounting are presented. The level of family influence was found to act as a significant contextual factor for the organisation of management accounting in medium‐sized firms.

The pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities is not always successful. On the one hand, entrepreneurial failure offers an invaluable opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about their ventures and themselves. On the other hand, entrepreneurial failure is associated with substantial financial, psychological, and social costs. When entrepreneurs fail to learn from failure, the potential value of this experience is not fully utilized and these costs will have been incurred in vain. In this chapter, the authors investigate how the stigma of failure exacerbates the various costs of failure, thereby making learning from failure much more difficult. The authors combine an analysis of interviews of 20 entrepreneurs (who had, at the time of interview, experienced failure) with an examination of archival data reflecting the legal and cultural environment around their ventures. The authors find that stigma worsens the entrepreneurs’ experience of failure, hinders their transformation of failure experience, and eventually prevents them from utilizing the lessons learnt from failure in their future entrepreneurial activities. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for the entrepreneurship research and economic policies.

The authors aim to present an overview of the papers in this special issue on the theme of the role of management accounting and control in routine and change in organizations, which arose from the Management Control Association Conference at the University of Greenwich, London, UK in September 2010.

The authors place the research undertaken and the interpretations offered by the authors in the context of ongoing developments in new institutionalism in sociology.

The authors' review shows that researchers are now exploring routine and change in the context of competitive environments in both the private and the public sector.

The review brings attention to emerging work in the area of management accounting and control that explores change in changing organizational forms.

This study aims to examine the relationship between family business identity disclosure by firms and consumer product evaluations and the moderating impact, if any, of firm size on this relationship. Toward this end, the study seeks to develop a theoretical explanation for how consumers process family business identity information.

A qualitative pre-study was conducted to obtain preliminary evidence that consumers’ perceptions of family businesses originate from both family- and business-based category beliefs. A product evaluation experiment, involving young adult subjects, was used to test the research hypotheses, and the experiment data were analyzed using MANOVA.

The key finding was that the effect of family business identity disclosure on consumer product evaluations is moderated by firm size.

This research has implications for businesses seeking to promote their family business identity in branding communications.

This research provides a theoretical account of why consumers might hold different perceptions of family business brands. The interactive effect of firm size and family business identity information disclosure on consumer product evaluations contributes new insight to family business branding.