Navigating management control change: pathways to the future of work

Purpose: COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements and adapt their ways of working. Yet, we know little about how management control might be enacted in the future of the sustainable workplace. The objective of the study is to examine the patterns of management control change in the Big 4 accounting firms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: Adopting an exploratory qualitative research design, the authors draw on 42 interviews with directors and associates in the Big 4 professional services firms. Findings: The findings reveal two pathways of management control change including alignment and displacement. The authors found that relatively minor adaptions to action and result controls were relied upon to respond to substantial cultural and personnel control changes. Originality/value: The contributions are threefold: the authors take a temporal perspective to (1) unpack the changes to management control arrangements; (2) theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways encompassing pace, scope and longevity of management control change and (3) contextualise management control arrangements in a hybrid work setting. Highlights: COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements. Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways. The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements. Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls. The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.