Studying "and": A perspective on studying the interdependence between management control practices

Inspired by the theme of the AOS Conference Management Controls as System or Package I discuss two issues regarding the notion of interdependence, the key feature distinguishing management controls as a system or package. First, I use the semantic framework of force dynamics to characterize interdependence between management control practices as a causal relationship between them, and use examples of research presented at the conference to highlight the usefulness of the force dynamics framework to study and understand interdependence. Second, I highlight two benefits of experiments for studying interdependence (force dynamics) between management control practices, both of which involve creating "ideal" counterfactuals: (1) leveraging the high level of internal validity of experiments to isolate the causal relationship between management control practices and the mechanism underlying that relationship, and (2) creating the variation in management control practice that may be absent in real-world settings, but are necessary for theory testing. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.