A significant body of literature has explored the relationships between formal MCS and product innovation within subunits, taking R&D departments, product development teams and product development projects as the level of analysis (Abernethy & Brownell, 1997; Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995; Davila, 2000), but limited emphasis has been placed on the relationship between the use of formal MCS at top management levels and product innovation examined from an organizational perspective