Executive Personality and Management Accounting Control Systems: Corporate Governance Mechanisms as a Mediating Framework

Executive personality plays a significant role in shaping strategic decisions, organizational behaviour, and the effectiveness of management control practices. This paper develops an integrative conceptual framework explaining how executive personality influences the design and use of Management Accounting and Control Systems (MACS) through the mediating role of corporate governance. Drawing upon Upper Echelons Theory, Agency Theory, and Contingency Theory, the framework argues that executives’ psychological characteristics affect organizational outcomes, while corporate governance serves as the institutional mechanism that channels, constrains, or reinforces these behavioural influences within accounting and control processes.The study adopts a conceptual research design based on an extensive review and synthesis of scholarly literature on executive personality, corporate governance, behavioural management accounting, and organizational control systems. By integrating complementary theoretical perspectives, the paper develops a coherent conceptual model and proposes five theoretically grounded propositions that explain the relationships among executive personality, governance mechanisms, and MACS, providing a foundation for future empirical investigation.The proposed framework suggests that executive personality exerts both direct and indirect effects on the design and effectiveness of management accounting and control systems.
Keywords: Executive Personality, Corporate Governance, Management Accounting and Control Systems (MACS),Upper Echelons Theory, Behavioural Management Accounting, Agency Theory, Contingency Theory.

Management

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