The notion of 'Controlling', as it is commonly used in German-speaking countries, may be regarded as an equivalent term for management accounting. At the same time, there have been considerable efforts to establish Controlling as a discipline on its own, rather than to regard it simply as the German synonym of management accounting. This is reflected in many writings on Controlling which have tried to identify a possible 'core' or 'essence' of the subject. In this paper, we argue that this identity discourse may be interpreted as a strategy of Controlling researchers to achieve cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy of their discipline. Drawing on interview material as well as publication and citation analyses, we show how various institutional pressures and constraints not only influenced the institutionalization of Controlling as an academic discipline but also impacted the form and substance of Controlling research. This raises some important questions for our understanding of academic disciplines more generally, some of which we address in this paper
This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the structures and the development of management accounting and management control research in German-speaking countries between 1970 and 2003 as well as to the literature on “Comparative International Accounting History". It is mainly set in the “archive", using published articles and an empirical survey to describe and explain the development of controlling as an academic discipline in German-speaking countries. Eight explorative research questions on the development of the discipline are answered. The analysis covers three perspectives that complement each other: relevant chairs at German-speaking universities (input), German-language publications (output) and citations (outcome) on the subject. The results indicate that controlling has become an established discipline of business administration (Betriebswirtschaftslehre ) in German-speaking countries and can be considered a comparatively young field that has traditionally been highly practice-oriented, but also self-referential and for the most part not integrated into the international community. While publishing and citation patterns have changed over time in German-speaking countries they remain at variance with international management accounting research.
Überblick ■ Controlling ist eine vergleichsweise junge Teildisziplin der Betriebswirtschaftslehre, die sich mittlerweile in Praxis und Wissenschaft etabliert hat. Das Wissen über seine Entwicklung ist in weiten Teilen noch unscharf und weitgehend durch "anecdotal evidence" bestimmt. ■ Ziel des Aufsatzes ist es, einen Beitrag zum besseren Verständnis von Strukturen und Entwicklung der deutschsprachigen Controllingforschung zu leisten. ■ Die durchgeführte Untersuchung beruht auf einer Analyse der Zitations-und Kozitationsstrukturen von 643 Beiträgen zu Controllingthemen, die im Zeitraum von 1970 bis 2003 in sechs führenden wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften im deutschen Sprachraum veröffentlicht wurden. Diese Beiträge enthalten insgesamt 18.125 Quellen. ■ Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass das Zitierverhalten in der Controllingforschung im Vergleich zu anderen betriebswirtschaftlichen Teildisziplinen durch eine Reihe von Besonderheiten geprägt ist und dass sich die Strukturen der deutschsprachigen Controllingforschung über die Zeit stark verändert haben. 395
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