Advancing the management control systems-as-a-package: designing external resilience controls for climate-exposed agricultural industry

Purpose – Agricultural firms face climate, technological and geopolitical volatility. Existing management control system (MCS) frameworks acknowledge uncertainty but lack a control category that explains how external signals trigger and shape internal routines. This study aims to introduce and develop external resilience controls (ERCs) as an extension to the MCS-as-a-package, showing how firms translate external volatility into structured internal responses. Design/methodology/approach – This study adopts a design science research (DSR) approach to conceptualize, illustrate and assess the ERCs framework. It draws on six years of financial and operational patterns (2019–2024) with a structured content analysis of 2024 annual reports from 12 listed agricultural firms in Southeast Asia. A three-level maturity rubric is used to assess the extent to which ERC mechanisms are embedded in planning, monitoring, governance and incentive systems. Findings – The analysis shows that climate, technological and geopolitical shocks are integrated into firms’ control routines through climate dashboards, artificial intelligence-based agronomy, mobile app ecosystems and traceability platforms. These mechanisms influence key performance indicators, governance structures and incentive systems in ways not captured by existing MCS categories. This study identifies three ERC components – climate resilience, technology-driven and geopolitical and legitimacy controls – and shows how leading firms embed these mechanisms into real-time and strategic decision cycles. Originality/value – This study contributes to MCS theory by proposing ERCs as a distinct control group that operates as an external wrapper to the existing MCS package. It offers a framework that clarifies how externally triggered, data-rich signals are translated into internal control routines, providing a foundation for understanding control design in climate-exposed and volatility-intensive sectors.