The mental appropriation process by a small business owner-manager of a management control system: three steps in liaison with the designer[La apropiación del sistema de control de gestión por el dirigente-propietario de pequeña empresa: tres etapas en relación con el diseñador]

The creation of a Management Control System by a designer will require appropriation by the user later on. The analysis grid proposed, an outcome of a literature review, allows to distinguish the stage reached in the appropriation process, which comprises three sequential phases. A qualitative approach is applied to the case of 15 Small Businesses in the Second Fix Building Sector. The proprietor-manager can either design his/her Management Control System, or externalise this to the Chartered Accountant, or delegate to the quantity surveyor. Field work reveals recurrent failure in the appropriation when the proprietor-manager is not himself/herself the designer, such failure leading to dropping Management Control altogether. The reasons for this are, on the one hand, the poor quality of communication with the Chartered Accountant as regards a formalised vision of the future of the enterprise, and on the other hand, the lack of awareness of the multifarious character of management by the Quantity Surveyor. Recommendations focus on the proprietor-manager's ability to modify his/her patterns of thinking; indeed, the gap between the designer's work and the user's expectations generates an imbalance which has a potentially beneficial contribution to future evolution.