Developing Individual IT-Enabled Capabilities for Management Control Systems

Management control systems (MCS) facilitate managers’ decision making. At their core, MCS consist of corporate planning and reporting capabilities that rely on IT and non-IT assets. Recently, both researchers and practitioners have paid increasing attention to use maturity models (MM) for designing and using such capabilities effectively and efficiently. Although MMs are well-established and easy to apply, they lack a theoretical foundation and IS research focuses rather on their development process than on using them to create individual IT-enabled capabilities for MCS. We address this research gap by developing a method to systematically adjust MMs from the knowledge base to firm-specific business needs. Findings from the resource-based view (RBV) guide our development process. With an interpretative case study in the chemical sector we demonstrate the applicability of our method. We present a list of IT and non-IT assets that are necessary for our case company to develop individual IT-enabled planning and reporting capabilities. Information systems research benefits from our findings as we translate the RBV into action. Practice benefits from an individual view on their IT-enabled capabilities and we force managers to jointly consider their IT and non-IT assets when they are designing IT-enabled capabilities for their company.