Family firms are the most common type of business in the world and the study of family
firms has increased significantly over the recent decades. In line with globalization and
business growth, the need for management accounting and control have increased which
often has an informal characteristic in family firms. Scholars have warned that if
management accounting and control is to maintain its relevance it needs to adapt a more
strategic focus, through strategic management accounting and control instruments, to
underline the vision of the business, which can create the need of professionalization of the
family firm, through hiring external expertise. Whether strategic management accounting
and control instruments is something that family firms are using or not, has not been
investigated with qualitative research, which is why we have focused on a family firm
intensive region characterized by high economic growth, the so-called region of Gnosjö.
The purpose with this research is to increase the understanding of what role the strategic
management accounting and control instruments have within family firms in the region of
Gnosjö. We did so by focusing on three specifically chosen strategic management
accounting and control instruments, explicitly benchmarking, activity based costing and
the balanced scorecard. The study was conducted using a qualitative approach, in which
data was collected through semi-structured interviews. This is to increase the ability to
create a deeper understanding of the examined subject.
The results show that only one of the three surveyed instruments that is being used formally
is benchmarking, which is primarily done through continuous performance benchmarking.
Furthermore, the study results show tendencies that the two other strategic instruments,
activity based costing and the balanced scorecard, is used but in a more informal way.
However, we see an increased interest and a need for these two strategic instruments as a
result of business growth. Our conclusion is however that if these three strategic
management accounting and control instruments are to be successfully implemented in a
family firm, professionalization by hiring an external CFO is not enough; instead it requires
a further professionalization through external expertise.