Control Through Configuration: Management Control Systems for Performance and Sustainability Compliance in Global Supply Chains

Abstract

Global supply chains increasingly depend on cross-border arrangements through which firms relocate, outsource, or coordinate activities across organizational and national boundaries. However, the strategic promise of offshoring is not automatically realized, as many initiatives underdeliver relative to initial expectations. At the same time, global supply chains are increasingly subject to binding regulation that extends corporate accountability across supply chain tiers, marking a shift from voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives toward enforceable legal obligations. This dissertation examines how management control systems, understood as packages of interrelated control mechanisms, are configured and, when required, reconfigured in global supply chains, with particular attention to offshoring performance and sustainability compliance. Drawing on four studies, it shows that offshoring performance is better understood through configurations of formal and informal controls and contextual factors such as trust, culture, and relationship continuity. It further shows that the operation of control arrangements involves recurring governance effort and that binding supply chain due diligence regulation reshapes management control to demonstrate sustainability compliance.