Forms of contingency fit in management accounting research—a critical review

Abstract

Contingency literature in the accounting control area has for a long time been criticized for being fragmentary and contradictory as a result of methodological limitations. A review of 10 articles in the strategy-MAS area adds to this picture by showing that many different forms of fit have been used, and that very few researchers fully acknowledge the difficulties of relating these forms to each other. As a result, some researchers claim that their findings are contradictory when this is not necessarily the case, while others incorrectly argue that their results are strongly supported by previous studies.