The data for the comparative case s

The data for the comparative case study included in this paper originate from two research projects in the electronics industry in Denmark. The first project involved carrying out in-depth case studies of management control and strategy in manufacturing systems in five electronics manufacturers, and the second project involved studying product development, management control, and strategy in four companies also in the electronics industry. For each project, data collection was undertaken for approximately 6 months on average, and 18–24 interviews were carried out in each company. Furthermore, observations at meetings and document studies were conducted. Although each of the two projects initially focused on their own functional unit, that is, manufacturing and new product development, the interdependencies among suppliers, new product development, manufacturing, and customer relationships in the companies necessitated data collection on a wide range of issues, including management control, organisational design, and strategy issues in different functional units, in order to better understand manufacturing and new product development issues in a wider organisational setting.

The relatively broad scope of the studies implied that field data on performance measurement and strategy implementation issues were available for both companies studied. By chance, two of the companies included in the research projects were in the process of implementing new nonfinancial performance measures to support manufacturing strategy implementati