The Levers of Management Control System in Organizational Life Cycle

This paper discusses the application of management control system (MCS) in each stage of organizational life cycle (OLC). MCS is described using Simon�s (1995) levers of control (belief, boundary, interactive control, and diagnostic control). This study explains OLC in 4 stages, namely birth, growth, maturity, revival, and is measured using 8 indicators (environment uncertainty; the influence of board, owners and shareholders; decentralization of authority; strategic planning; diversification; marketing and distribution; innovation; managers� focus on decision making). This study is conducted on 37 limited liability companies in Indonesia by distributing questionnaires in the form of Likert scales to managers. The data is processed using Compare Means One-Way Anova. The results indicate that belief, boundary and interactive control are used to a greater extent in the growth and revival stages, while diagnostic system is used to a greater extent in birth, growth and revival stages. This paper provides information for managers about type of controls are often used in each of the OLC stage, thus managers are able to decide the right MCS in managing the strategy for the company.