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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The Strategic Scorecards: An Instrumentation of the Strategic Management Accounting. Exploration of a Concept, Instrumentation and Results from a French Empirical Study

subject

description

I describe in this study a generic model of strategic management accounting instrumentation: the strategic scorecards. In order to build this generic model, I review in the existing literature the concepts of Strategic Control and Strategic Management Accounting (SMA). I present the characteristics of these concepts and analyse the reasons why they emerged. I show how the strategic scorecards are an instrumentation of the SMA in studying the most widely known and esteemed scorecards: the Balanced Scorecards (Kaplan & Norton, 1996) and Skandia's Navigator (Edvinsson & Malone, 1997). I then clarify the outlines for a generic model of strategic scorecard and disclose an "a priori" typology of this instrument. I investigate the interest for Scorecards from french managers through an empirical research based on a questionnaire. Using a typological analysis, I present five categories of strategic scorecards and the characteristics of the companies associated with the different types of scorecards. Finally, I present results of fifteen interviews confirming the previous classification. French managers underlined some problems in integrating the operational and strategic dimensions of management accounting. In conclusion, french management accounting evolves to a more strategic and external conception.