The Role of Management Control Systems in Managing Competing Institutional Logics: A Case Study of a Not-for-profit Organisation

In this paper, we rely on Smets et al.’s (2015) framework, which includes three mechanisms: (1) segmenting, (2) bridging and (3) demarcating, to examine how not-for-profit organisations manage competing institutional logics, and to facilitate the achievement of organisational goals. Using a case study of a not-for-profit organisation, we demonstrate that management control systems serve as the segmenting and the bridging mechanisms to manage the institutional pressure of being more business-like while maintain its social mission. In addition; with increasing institutional pressure, the organisation was moving from segmenting logics to bridging competing logics and the designing processes of performance measurement system is driving this change. These findings provide valuable insights on how management control systems serve as logic-managing mechanisms and actively manage competing institutional logics.