Marc Janka receives “Best Paper Award Controlling” of the Péter Horváth Foundation

Mr. Marc Janka was awarded the “Best Paper Award Controlling” of the Péter Hovárth Foundation at the 33rd Stuttgarter Controller & Management Forum1 on October 11^th, 2019. The prize money of EUR 10,000 is one of the highest in the German-speaking area. He receives the prize for the research study “Management Control of New Product Development and Perceived Environmental Uncertainty: Exploring Heterogeneity using a Finite Mixture Approach” co-authored with Professor Thomas Guenther and published in the “Journal of Management Accounting Research (Vol. 30 No. 2) in 2018.2

The study deals with management control in new product development under environmental uncertainty. Based on a survey conducted in 2009, 276 firms were statistically analyzed using a new analytical method in the field of management control research. By estimating finite mixtures, two different groups of companies with different configuration could be identified. The applied analytical method has already been used in marketing research to identify different customer segments and has been adapted for the first time in the management control research.

The results show that the first group (approx. ⅔ of the firms) emphasizes its controlling more strongly when facing high environmental uncertainty, while the second group (approx. ⅓ of the firms) reduces the emphasis. The two groups can be distinguished based on perceived complexity of the environmental uncertainty, their innovation strategy, and finally the effectiveness of controlling. It is interesting to note that both groups are successful in product development. While the two groups thus do not differ in their effectiveness (number of new products successfully launched on the market), there are indications, that the first group exhibits higher efficiency (success rate of completed product development projects). The differences in efficiency here confirm the effectivity of management controlling in product development when facing high environmental uncertainty for many firms.

The study therefore provides important impulses for both research and praxis.