Balancing the management control package of small, rapidly growing firms in turbulent environments

The thesis of this paper is that the management control package of small rapidly growing firms in turbulent environments needs to be based on a dynamic conception of balance. While many contemporary management control frameworks endorse balance as a guiding principle for management control, its specific features receive little attention and implicit conceptions are static. This paper first characterises the balance of a control package in terms of situational requirements on component selection, component weight, relations and coherence. The paper then examines the consistency between balance in contemporary management control frameworks and implications for balance derived from firm attributes. The conclusions suggest that by considering balance as a state and as an act, acknowledging requirements of balance and imbalance, and recognising situational and temporal dimensions of balance, we may advance the boundaries of management control research.