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Building on the growing body of research that has addressed management control systems and innovation, the purpose of this study is to assess the extent and nature of the use of controls in an innovative setting and how they work together unveiling the relationships and tensions amongst the Simons’ levers.

This study resorts to an in-depth and single case study in a company that has both a strong orientation to innovation and stable control practices in place. Evidence was collected from 32 interviews, visits to the company and internal documentation.

At the case company, it was possible to find the presence of controls according to all the levers of control. Likewise, joint effects of controls used according to interactive and beliefs approaches and diagnostic and boundary controls showed a consistent reinforcement that push the organization in a single direction. Signs of some countervailing reinforcement between these pairs were also detected, creating tensions. This in general shows that innovation can be weighed against the necessity of goal achievement taking place within fields in which the company can exploit the effort developed.

This study documents the collective use of controls in a context in which innovation is needed and how the combination of the levers of control with their inner workings and tensions allow the company to have a corporate environment of innovation that is friendly.

The purpose of this study is to present the evolution of thinking on the role of management control systems (MCSs) in innovation, according to the development of control practices, and to provide a reflection on the achievements of the more recent literature.

This paper assesses articles, books and book chapters that have explored MCSs in innovation, together with seminal works on management accounting and control.

Moving from the traditional phase where MCSs were seen as detrimental to innovation, the literature has now reached a new consensus that attributes a positive role to control. In this recent phase, it arises from the literature that MCSs in the realm of innovation should embrace a multiplicity of controls; MCSs depend on the magnitude and innovation mode of a company; MCSs evolve over time; and that synergies and tensions are expected to arise. Adding these factors to the inherent complexity of innovation, the assertion is that qualitative approaches should be undertaken to infuse the field with more fine-grained evidence. It is also proposed that this methodological approach be used to address the following points: (1) the use of multiple controls; (2) synergies and tensions; and (3) behavioural aspects of controls in relation with innovation.

The paper is of value for researchers who have an interest in studying the use of MCSs in innovation and in qualitative research and proposes some areas of research that could be explored.

By designing a pilot time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) model, this study aims to examine in depth the suitability and the complexity of TDABC in a manufacturing company.

To obtain a deeper understanding on the matters to analyse, this research adopts an interventionist approach. The host organisation is GP, a Portuguese company in the frozen food sector.

The authors’ experience allows them to assert that TDABC is suitable for a manufacturing company and it is able to deal with the variability of the industrial processes. Nonetheless, through a comparison with the models presented in the literature, TDABC appears to be more complex for manufacturing. The authors argue that this happens for two reasons. First, the two types of resources (human labour and machinery) used in production areas create a need to split tasks and to create two equations for each process, something that does not happen in service companies. Second, times are difficult to individualise for certain highly automated procedures, which could also give rise to some errors.

The designed model is compared to other models presented in the literature.

This study shows a real example of TDABC in manufacturing and the procedural innovation of the time equations.

As the TDABC literature has been mostly focused on examples of service companies, the authors examine the technical suitability and the complexity of TDABC in manufacturing companies.

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

Manufacturers and engineers need a practical and operational way to understand sustainable manufacturing and to apply it to their shop floors. The single index enables manufacturing industries to make decisions considering the continuous improvement to increase sustainability performance. The purpose of this paper is to develop a manufacturing sustainability index (MSI) based on lean and sustainability concepts using sustainable-value stream mapping.

The methodology of this research is linked to Delphi- analytical hierarchy process (AHP) qualitative assessment with sustainable-value stream mapping quantitative analysis for determining MSI. The Delphi method is used with relevant indicator selection, sustainable-value stream mapping is used to score the relevant indicator with efficiency approach and the AHP method is used to determine the indicator weight. To evaluate the applicability of this framework for assessing sustainability in the manufacturing process, a case study in Indonesian Wooden Furniture was developed.

The findings of this research is the framework for evaluating and assessing the sustainability performance of the manufacturing process. Although evaluation of the framework is limited to the furniture industry, there is a methodology potential to reproduce for the other sectors.

Theoretically, this study has provided a single index to measure performance of the manufacturing sustainability comprehensively at factory level. However, the implementation of the developed model is too limited. More application in different sectors and different industrial sizes is needed.

The value of this research lies in the novelty of the single index in measuring manufacturing sustainability and the relevant indicators for the furniture industry in Indonesia. The selection of the indicators has involved practitioners in the furniture industry and encompassed economic, environmental and social dimensions. The visualization of indicators through sustainable-value stream mapping is proven to be more practical and helpful for industrialists.

For the past 20 years, Latin American countries have gone from being a low-cost region to significant players in the world economy, with five of its countries ranked among the world’s 50th largest by gross domestic product. This paper aims to study the contribution of Latin American researchers in the field of supply chain management (SCM) to aid an understanding of the Latin American impact within global supply chains (SCs).

The authors present a study which includes a bibliometric analysis of the papers authored by Latin American researchers in the SCM field and which were exclusively published in journals included in the Journal Citation Reports. In addition, the authors conducted a survey to Latin American researchers and consultants to gain greater understanding of the main difficulties, which in their opinion, have negatively affected the SCM area in Latin America within the past five years, and identify possible misalignment between Latin American research and the challenges for SC in the region.

The results show that Latin American research on SCM in the past nine years is not significant for the field considering the number of papers, citations and the papers published in top journals. Another interesting finding is the lack of collaboration among researchers from different Latin American countries, as well as with corporate. Finally, survey results reveal significant differences regarding the main difficulties each country perceived as relevant.

Comparing results from both analyses, relevant misalignments stand out between published research and the main difficulties detected. These suggest a challenging opportunity for Latin America, emphasizing the need to increase research contribution of the scientific community, through collaboration and alignment toward overcoming the most troublesome difficulties for Latin America. Therefore, the authors suggest future regional research directions which could also help global companies to tackle the challenges faced and optimize performance of their Latin American SCs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous research on the quality and impact of Latin American research in SCM has been conducted. Also, misalignments between researchers and practitioners in the region, which allow identifying weaknesses of Latin American SCs, have not been studied before.