An organization’s management control system should be designed to align with and support the execution of the strategy that is guiding the development towards the goals. However, the management control system is not only a reactive toolbox that should be configured according to the present strategy. It also contains a set of methods that can be used to develop, design and communicate strategies. Management control should, in this setting, be interpreted as all information-based routines and procedures that are used in order to affect the employees’ behaviors; both focusing on intentions for the future and more balanced evaluation of past performance.
I have spent the last 25 years studying strategy, management control and pricing. I have done this on the actual border between theory and practice. I wrote my dissertation at the Industry research school on applied IT – in a dual employment where I worked both for a private company and the university. I have reflected on my experiences from this very special setting in an anthology about the research environment at Economic Information Systems at Linköping University. Please read article here.
During the last ten years I have been very interested, together with colleagues, in innovative price models, and how they can be developed and aligned with a company’s business model and how this business model fits with the greater business ecology the company is part of. The project was initiated by the global telecom company Ericsson and was staffed with researchers from different universities. Our experiences from the project have been documented in books and articles, and we now continue to research and develop our theories on innovative price models in close cooperation with private companies and public agencies, through the collaborative effort CASIP (Centre for Advanced Studies of Innovative Price models).
Teaching
At Linköping University, I teach management control and strategy. Mainly on master level. I also have a specialized course on management and control of IT which builds on my dissertation, focusing on how to design the management control system to realize the benefits of IT. In addition to these more specialized management control courses I am also responsible for the more practice-oriented course in business administration at Malmstens Linköping University.
