Theoretical construct of strategic control systems

This paper presents the development of an instrument for measuring strategic control systems (SCS). Although SCS has received considerable attention in the literature, most of the discussions, on the elements that constitute SCS, are limited to descriptive statements. Thus, the theoretical construct of SCS suffers from lack of extensive statistical validation procedures. However, there are a few authors that had initiated the development of an instrument to measure the SCS. Their small effort had also been criticized due to the inconsistency among authors in defining SCS, which would likely affect the validity of the instrument being developed. Given this lacuna, this paper has developed and validated an instrument for conceptualizing SCS, specifically under the environment of Quality Management strategy. Based on a careful and systematic process of instrument development, this paper revealed that SCS consists of two important dimensions, namely strategy implementation and strategic resource allocation. In developing this instrument, a total number of 205 respondents were involved. The findings reported in this paper would benefit future researchers in measuring SCS, particularly for survey-based research.