The Rise of MCS and EMA in the Sustainable Field: A Systematic Literature Analysis

Abstract

Sustainable development is becoming increasingly popular in all fields and the importance of sustainability and business issues will grow. Despite the increase in scholarly attention paid to improving organizational sustainability performance, such as Management Control Systems (MCS) and Environmental Management Accounting (EMA), few studies have been conducted on the relationship between MCS and EMA, with no aggregation of findings and knowledge. To fill this void, this study conducted a systematic literature review of the MCS and EMA in the field of sustainability. A comprehensive search was conducted for journal articles that addressed MCS and EMA issues in the context of sustainability. Considering that EMA and MCS are more widely used in manufacturing, this study focuses on the manufacturing industry. Based on rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria, 43 journal articles were selected for the final analysis. The bibliometric data from the identified studies, their theoretical and methodological approaches, research themes, and research backgrounds were analyzed in this review. As a result, this study identifies existing gaps in the current literature, provides directions for the organization to research internal systems’ interactions and suggests future research directions with specific research agendas.