Strategy, strategic management accounting and performance: a configurational analysis

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of different configurational archetypes of strategy and strategic management accounting and to appraise how management accounting's horizontal and vertical alignment with strategy can facilitate performance.Design/methodology/approach – The study deploys a holistic configurational approach to examine the relationship between strategy, strategic management accounting, and performance. Configurations are derived empirically, using an inductive approach, from a sample of 109 manufacturing companies.Findings – The observed configurations (i.e. “analytics”, “blue‐chips”, “first movers”, “domestic protectors”, “laggards and socialism relics”) constitute varying levels of performance and varying degrees of fit. Support is provided for the equifinality proposition that different strategic and structural alternatives are associated with similar performance levels. Equivocal support is provided for the configurational proposition that internall...