Psychology in management accounting and control research: an overview of the recent literature
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Psychology in management accounting and control research: an overview of the recent literature Lisa‑Marie Wibbeke1 · Maik Lachmann1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract For decades, management accounting and control (MAC) researchers have employed a diverse set of source disciplines to predict and examine behavior, and psychology is among the most frequently drawn upon. Although the literature confirms that psychological theories are highly relevant to MAC research, the existing knowledge on this field remains fragmented. Given this background, we examine recent MAC research through a systematic review of the different subfields of psychology to investigate the development of this stream of research. To do so, we collect 125 relevant articles from nine leading accounting journals between 2000 and 2019 and analyze their contents. On this basis, we provide a detailed overview of the use of psychological theories in recent literature and identify links between specific theories and MAC topics. We find that the quantity and proportion of psychologybased MAC research and the diversity of psychology subfields all increase during our investigation period, especially between 2015 and the first half of 2019. Overall, most studies address performance measurement and evaluation topics, and social psychology concepts are the most frequently applied. However, we find considerable differences in the application of psychological theories across different MAC topics. Our review provides insights into the content of this research stream and, thus, serves as a valuable source for researchers seeking an overview of previous investigations drawing on different subfields of psychology. Keywords Management accounting · Management control · Psychology · Literature review JEL Classification M41
* Lisa‑Marie Wibbeke l.wibbeke@tu‑berlin.de Maik Lachmann maik.lachmann@tu‑berlin.de 1
Department of Accounting and Management Control, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany
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L.-M. Wibbeke, M. Lachmann
1 Introduction For decades, management accounting and control (MAC) researchers have employed a diverse set of economic theories and sociological or organizational approaches to predict and examine behavior and decision-making (Hesford et al. 2007; Hopper and Bui 2016; Lachmann et al. 2017). Previous literature studies illuminate applications of specific subfields of psychology in MAC research. These studies identify cognitive, motivational, and social psychological theories frequently used in prior research (Birnberg et al. 2007) and examine research analyzing subjective decision-making in MAC contexts (Luft and Shields 2009). Further, a recent study by Kaplan et al. (2018b) discusses four social psychological theories that have been or could be applied to behavioral accounting. Taken together, these studies indicate that psychology is highly relevant to contemporary MAC research and spark further interest in its contents and characteristics. Although the aforementioned studies
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