The construction and customization of the Balanced Scorecard: A field study of management consultants in translating popular management accounting techniques.

摘要

Based on a field study of a specialized management consulting firm, this research extends prior literature by focusing on the processes of translation to customize a particular management accounting technique, the Balanced Scorecard. The results are examined from an actor-network perspective based on Latour and colleagues' work, whereby the process of diffusion and dissemination is not regarded as the spread of a fixed idea, but rather, it occurs through a translation process where various actors, either management consultants as knowledge experts or clients as local users, seek to speak for problems and inscribe solutions into a technical artifact subsumed with their own intentions, meanings and interests. An actor-network perspective emphasizes the role of actors as users and adopters in influencing ideas and practices for their own purposes.; This study provides empirical evidence on how management ideas and techniques are transformed and reconstructed through consultant-client interactions. It also provides an in-depth understanding of how the idea of the Balanced Scorecard is made practical by observing management consultants performing their every day tasks, and identifying important aspects of the consulting process in translating a management accounting technique into local practice. These daily work activities include proposal writings, kick off meetings, executive training, and the use of graphics and flipcharts, which variably re-shape and re-embed a new management accounting techniques in different client organizations.