Our results can also be applied to the field of valuebased
performance measurement. As any adjustment to
the financial accounting database reduces consistency, we
draw the tentative conclusion that value-based profit measures
should not be too sophisticated, but should clearly
relate to the underlying profit measures published in financial
reports. Nevertheless, this issue should be covered by
further research.
The notion of consistency is also of importance with
respect to the design of management control systems in
multinational companies whose foreign subsidiaries act
under local financial GAAP regimes. To facilitate management
control within these subsidiaries, headquarters could
refrain from enforcing the firm’s primary GAAP to allow
for intra-subsidiary consistency of financial language. This
implication should be the subject of further research, as
empirical studies provide rather mixed results on whether
headquarters indeed follow this practice (e.g., Angelkort
et al., 2009; Hopper et al., 1992) or not (e.g., Joseph et al.,
1996).
The in-depth analysis regarding the impact of the
controllers’ tasks shows that consistency between financial
and management accounting information cannot be
achieved in a naive fashion by simply using the financial
accounting numbers for controllership purposes as well.
For example, neither with planning and budgeting nor with
performance measurement is there a statistically significant
total effect via the mediating variable consistency of
financial language. Evidently, there are parts of the management
accounting system in which consistency does not
seem to matter as strongly as the adaptation of information
to control purposes.