Abstract This dissertation investigates the use of management accounting and control systems in R&D intensive firms in different organizational life-cycle stages. The thesis consists of four essays focusing on two categories of management accounting and control systems: capital budgeting decisions and management control systems. First, we investigate the evaluation and financing of investment projects in R&D intensive firms. Second, we moreover investigate how R&D intensive firms themselves use management control systems and how investors control their investments in R&D intensive target firms. The survey method within a contingency framework is used in the first three essays while the last essay represents the case study method. However, the dissertation as a whole is based on two main contexts, i.e. the organizational life-cycle and the field of high technology.

The results indicate that more sophisticated capital budgeting methods are used in large-sized R&D intensive firms while small-sized firms are not so likely to use these methods. The results indicate that firms understand the nature of R&D investment on the level of strategic management, because they have adopted strategic management tools in order to achieve better financial performance. We conclude that high R&D intensity plays an important role in management accounting, suggesting that large-sized high R&D intensity firms take note of special characteristics of R&D investments when taking strategic capital budgeting decisions. The comparison of the growth and revival stages extends the earlier life-cycle literature indicating that the information produced by management accounting and control systems is at least as important in the revival firm as it is during the first growth stage.