Management control in startups: a structured literature review

In recent years, the emergence and proliferation of startups have contributed to a wide range of technological, economic, and social implications. Startups are organizations born in contexts of uncertainty, and they generally operate under resource constraints and in the absence of business, management, marketing, and financial knowledge. Accordingly, management accounting scholars have focused on understanding the management control (MC) phenomenon in startups. Over the past two decades, literature on MC has employed diverse approaches to investigate MC adoption. Although a few attempts have been made to integrate this literature, we still do not have a clear understanding of the phenomenon. To provide a more consolidated perspective, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of the MC phenomenon in startups. Drawing on 37 articles, we structured our analysis around two complementary approaches, namely, bibliometric analysis to map the development and main trends of the literature and, more importantly, qualitative content analysis to integrate and categorize the MC phenomenon in startups according to its design, attributes of metric content and formality, intentions of use and formalization, and its antecedents and consequences. Therefore, the main contribution of this study is an integrated categorization of MC in startups that connects control design, attributes and intentions with their antecedents and consequences, thereby providing a more structured understanding of this fragmented literature. Building on this integrated perspective, we identify avenues for future research in currently underexplored areas.