حسابداری مدیریت و کنترل در شرکت های خانوادگی Future research on management accounting and control in family firms: suggestions linked to architecture, governance, entrepreneurship and stewardship

1 Introduction In the past few years, scholars of management accounting and control have shown increased interest in family firms (e.g., Giovannoni et al. 2011; Songini and Gnan 2015; Speckbacher andWentges 2012). Most of this research is motivated by the notion that family firms display considerable differences in the way they implement and use management accounting and control systems. Meanwhile, there have been more than 20 published papers which highlight the specifics of management accounting and control in family firms (see Table 1; for reviews of this literature, see Helsen et al. 2017; Prencipe et al. 2014; Salvato and Moores 2010; Senftlechner and Hiebl 2015; Songini et al. 2013). While the insights from this literature have helped us to gain a better understanding of how management accounting and control differs along varying degrees of family influence, the general management accounting and control literature has so far not considered family firms to a great extent. Instead it has rather focussed on a generic class of business that ignores family influence. This generic type of firm which dominates the management accounting and control literature shares many characteristics of non-family firms, amongst others: separation of ownership and control, stock market listing, and large firm size. In management accounting and control research based on contingency approaches, the most researched external variables include market competition, technology, environmental uncertainty and national culture, whereas the most researched internal variables include organizational size, structure and strategy (Chenhall 2003; Otley 2016). However, family influence so far does not feature in prominent reviews of this contingency-based management accounting and control literature such as Chenhall (2003) and Otley (2016). We believe this neglect of family firms in the management accounting and control literature is regrettable since the above-mentioned growing literature clearly indicates that family firms are not only different in their use and design of management accounting and control systems but also significant in all economies. Empirical findings from this literature underpin the specifics of family firms regarding management accounting and control. In addition, widely-used economic theories have been evoked to further explain these differences. For instance, several articles summarized in Table 1 adopt a theoretic viewpoint rooted in agency theory (e.g., Dekker et al. 2013, 2015; García Pérez de Lema and Duréndez 2007; Hiebl et al. 2012, 2013; Songini and Gnan 2015; Speckbacher and Wentges 2012).