The Role of Management Control Systems and Top Teams in Implementing Environmental Sustainability Policies

This paper simultaneously examines how the design of management control systems and top management team composition help organizations to implement environmental sustainability policies successfully. It also analyzes the effect of those policies on both short-term and long-term performance. A questionnaire was sent to every member of top management teams in 231 public hospitals in Spain. It obtained 457 useful responses from TMT members, allowing us to collect data on 81 full top management teams (35.06%). The partial least squares statistical technique was used to test the causal research model. It was found that the implementation of environmental sustainability policies has a negative effect on short-term organizational performance and a positive effect on long-term performance. The results show that management control systems and top management team diversity have a complementary effect on implementing policies focused on environmental sustainability. A broad design of management control systems helps organizations adopt sustainability policies to achieve long-term performance. It was also found that top management team diversity mitigates the negative effect of adopting environmental sustainability policies on short-term organizational performance.