It appears that trust in people exists even without the building of trust through formal procedures such as accouting information (Hardy, 1996;) and accounting-based controls are not decisive in the control sense either. Besides, the presence of the owner family creates stability in the firm as the family members, the managers, have been in the firm practically all their lives. At the same time, the key people in Omaga have been working for the firm almost from the beginning. For example, the Marketing Director started in production when the factory was established, the General Director (a younger brother of one of the Lithuanian founders) was appointed early on, and the current Financial Director has worked in Omaga practically all her working life. Therefore, accounting has perhaps not been needed to create trust, but more operational cooperation with the same people has been enough to decrease the uncertainty related to the possibility of inappropriate behavior
However, the data offer many examples of the reproduction of the existing management control structures and power relations. The beginning of the operations in Lithuania has also already affected the “glory” of the Area Director in the firm, which is expressed in a history of the start of Omaga that different people can tell with similar wordings. The Area Director was quite autonomously in charge of the Finnish control over oega for about the firt decade of its operations. Finnish people helped in setting up the factory, but the management was soon left to the locals. Especially, after the fall of Eastern exports, when the Management Board decided that export would not be the prime interest of the company, the Area director was able to focus on the Baltic area. Only in recent years has the Finnish Director of Production (currently the CEO of the ice cream business and a member of the owner family) been, along with the Area Director, a member in the Board of Directors of Omega so that two out of three board members are Finns. Before this the Director of Production had already cooperated with Omega on production-related issues. Personal contacts have accordingly been more important than monitoring the operations of the subsidiary though accounting information. Despite the developments of the business, such as the changed market situation in Lithuania and increasing coordination from the HO, the Area Director’s role in the management control over Baltic subsidiaries has continued, even though he has been semi-retired for a few years. His social position was preserved, even though there were significant losses in Latvia, as the setting up of a profit-making sales company took years due to unforeseen difficulties. These difficulties ranged from a grey economy to the resignation of the Director General. The Area Director describes himself as a partner in discussion with the locals: