Popularizing a Management Accounting Idea: The Case of the Balanced Scorecard

We explore how the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), as a management accounting technique, emerged in local practice and was developed and marketed as a global management practice. Drawing on actor network theory (ANT) the paper offers an analytical history of the BSC, emphasizing how its various features were translated and transformed, that is shaped and solidified, through repeated experimentation that entailed various innovations, modifications, labeling, and specification of abstract categories and cause-effect relations, into its recent forms. The paper also examines the networks and associations that not only shape the form of the BSC but also mobilize the interests of various constituencies around it as a global management technology and the strategies that Kaplan and Norton used to maintain control of this innovation through its continuous reinvention.

Keywords: balanced scorecard, strategic performance measures, history, translation, obligatory passage point, diffusion

JEL Classification: M41, B30

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Cooper, David J. and Ezzamel, Mahmoud and Qu, Sandy Q., Popularizing a Management Accounting Idea: The Case of the Balanced Scorecard (August 18, 2011). AAA 2012 Management Accounting Section (MAS) Meeting Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1911705 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1911705