The reception pattern of the balanced scorecard: accounting for interpretative viability

Abstract

‘The role of fads and fashions in shaping management accounting practices in contemporary organizations requires further inquiry’ (Malmi, T. (1999). Activity based costing diffusion across organizations: an exploratory empirical analysis of Finnish firms. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 24, 669). Against the background of the evolving management fashion literature we discuss the ‘reception pattern’ of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) in the Netherlands. To get insight into the organizational changes induced by and associated with the BSC-discourse, we systematically discovered how the concept, since its launch by Kaplan & Norton (1992), has grown into an umbrella that encompasses a variety of interpretations and uses. The paper offers a framework to show how BSC-discourse and its actual use have developed in interrelated yet loosely coupled ways.