ManagementAccountingResearch.docVIP

Management Accounting Research 1. Introduction A number of innovative management accounting techniques have been developed over the past two decades, the most widely known of which are Activity-Based Costing and the Balanced Scorecard BSC . Prior literature evaluates the success of these techniques by estimating its adoption rates and testing relationships between use and different types of outcome measures. Outcome measures used are, amongst others, use of the system, impact on decisions made based on information from these systems, dollar improvements following implementation of the system,and management evaluation of system success Foster and Swenson, 1997 . This study not only assesses the level of use, but also focuses on the purposes forwhich managers use the BSC. Many factors influence individual BSC usage. First, usage is influenced by theway the organization intends to use the BSC, and therefore by the design of the scorecard. Second, individual usage is influenced by the opinions of top management, supervisors, and other colleagues of BSC users,and by other elements of the control system available in the firm. Together, these factors lead to a varying degree of pressure on individual BSC users to use the scorecard, i.e. the subjective norm. As Hartwick and Barki 1994 argued ，however, when system usage is mandatory, i.e. the subjective norm to use the system is strong, the intensiveness of use might still vary. Somemanagers will use the system all the time, whereas others will use it selectively, e.g. when they consider using it to be effective. This implies that even if BSC usage were mandatory in a firm, both the intensiveness and purposes of use might vary among managers. In this paper, I explore this individual BSC usage in the context of organizational usage firm effects . I address anumber of avenues for further research raised by Malmi 2001 . First, he suggests that future research should study whether we can explain various types of BSC usa