The role of innovation in the evolution of management accounting and its integration into management control

This paper aims to show how the design of management control systems (MCS) has developed in response to the need for organizations to address the challenges of operating in uncertain settings by embracing innovation. We examine how management accounting has evolved from a traditional, cybernetic approach to control operating within a closed system with little attention to adaptive processes into MCS that encompass a more dynamic, complex, open approach to management control that has provided a basis to facilitate innovation. We examine how the design and use of these MCS, that incorporate traditional and new practices, have evolved in ways that can support innovation where this is critical to survival. Accounting Organizations and Society (AOS) has been quite instrumental in pioneering many developments in this field. We draw on AOS, and other publications, to identify significant contributions that have been efficacious in theorizing changes in MCS with a particular concern for the context of innovation within which this takes place.