A company's ability to best exploit performance potentials within buyer-supplier relationships
has become a critical success factor in securing competition and improving a company's overall
performance. One powerful attempt to meet this challenge can be found in the application of
cross-company management accounting approaches in order to execute performance control. However
implementation of suitable mechanisms and execution of control activities across company
boundaries - commonly executed by both partners - is often insufficient because actual
improvement potentials are not identified correctly. Embedded in a contingency-based research
framework the author combines several statistical methods to empirically analyze causal
relationships between performance and contingent performance-determinants. Resulting in a
control process-oriented guideline findings support companies in the design and use of
performance control systems in buyer-supplier relationships and open the field for further
research.
