The SMA literature has mostly not addressed the constant themes in the SM literature over the three decades change, organisational resources,innovation and the corporate. The two case studies, discussed briefly in this paper, highlight the need, in particular, to view the SMA system as part of an integrated set of organisational components. The importance of intensive and extensive collaboration within multi-disciplinary teams is also evident. The extant SMA literature linked with the management control, performance measurement and knowledge management literatures. Essentially the purpose of this paper is to delineate the broad conceptual and empirical context of the SMA literature, and the papers in this special issue.