Controlling as a driver of innovation and sustainability

The Frankfurt School Centre for Performance Management & Controlling (CPMC) hosted its 4th Controlling & Performance Management Dialogue on the Frankfurt campus on 7 November. In honour of Professor Ronald Gleich's 60th birthday and his 30 years of controlling research, experts – mainly his former students – discussed current, practice-relevant controlling topics in three panel discussions, including the relationship of controlling to innovation and sustainability.

The first panel discussion was dedicated to the topic of "Controlling as a Driver of Innovation", moderated by Professor Sven Heidenreich of Universität des Saarlands. The central findings of the panel discussion were that innovation controlling is necessary from a certain company size for budget allocation in order to be able to measure how successful product innovations actually are and whether they satisfy customer needs. Innovation controlling thus supports time-to-market in order to be able to implement time-critical innovations promptly.

The second panel discussion dealt with "Controlling research in the area of tension between academic excellence and practical relevance" and was moderated by Professor Andreas Wald of the University of Agder, Norway. A core theme of the discussion was that there is currently a gap between academia and practice. However, today it is necessary that management accounting/controlling research must always be designed to be relevant to practice.

Under the title "Future Corporate Controlling in the Context of Sustainability", Professor Mike Schulze of CBS International Business School moderated the third and last panel discussion of the evening. One central finding: The aspect of sustainability has steadily gained relevance in companies over the past ten years, but rapid growth has been evident for the past one to two years in particular, which is due to increased stakeholder demands, among other things.

As a further highlight of the event, Professor Ronald Gleich reviewed 60 years of life and 30 years of controlling research. He provided insights into his years in Stuttgart and Rheingau as well as his transition to Frankfurt. Professor Gleich also presented three "balancing acts" that need to be addressed: firstly, continuing to discover innovations and trends in controlling and "inventing" new tools; secondly, continuing to work intensively in the network; and thirdly, always setting new goals.