Purpose—To investigate whether and how evolving ideas about management control (MC) emerge in research about public sector performance management (PSPM)
Design/methodology/approach—Literature review on PSPM-research through using a set of key terms derived from a review of recent developments in MC
Findings—MC-research, originating in the management accounting discipline, is largely disconnected from PSPM-research as part of public administration and public management disciplines. Overlaps between MC and PSPM-research are visible in a cybernetic control approach, control variety and contingency-based reasoning. Both academic communities share an understanding of certain issues, although under diverging labels, especially enabling controls or in a more general sense usable performance controls, horizontal controls and control packaging. Specific MC-concepts are valuable for future PSPM-research, i.e., trust as a complement of performance-based controls in complex settings, and strategy as a variable in contingency-based studies
Research limitations/implications—Breaking the boundaries between two currently remote research disciplines on the one hand might dismantle ‘would-be’ innovations in one of these disciplines and on the other hand may provide a fertile soil for mutual transfer of knowledge. A limitation of our review of PSPM-research is that it may insufficiently cover research published in public sector accounting journals, which could be an outlet for MC-inspired PSPM-research
Originality/value—Unravelling the ‘apparent’ and ‘real’ differences between MC and PSPM-research, and in doing so, take the detected ‘real’ differences as a starting point for discussing in what ways PSPM research can benefit from MC-achievements.