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The Balanced Scorecard as a Metaphor of the Integrated Spectacle
Abstract
This paper seeks to contribute to the critical accounting literature on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). Considering the BSC a specific tool, given its ultimate integrative ambition, we are questioning whether and how its integrated dimension makes it a spectacular framework. To this end, we analyse mainstream approaches to the BSC, adopting Debord’s typology of the spectacle. While most critiques of the BSC highlight its conceptual weaknesses or ideological assumptions, we contend that the BSC incarnates a metaphor of the integrated spectacle in nowadays organisations. We explicate that the BSC succeeds in reconciling what Debord (1967, 1988) calls the concentrated and diffused forms of the spectacle through a holistic system linking field routines to strategic issues. We also demonstrate how the BSC might be subject to détournement, when illegitimate actors appropriate strategy. Our analysis contributes to the accounting literature in three ways. Firstly, we contribute to the literature on the BSC by showing that in its essence, the BSC offers the organisation a unitary status of an entity dispossessed from all its previous contradictions on property rights, value sharing or resource. Secondly, we contribute to the critical literature referring to Debord’s writings. We show the relevance, not only of the forms of spectacle as depicted one by one, but also of the transformation and dialectics from one form to another, with the potential role of the situation. Thirdly, dealing with the spectacle enables us to contribute to the literature on the visuals. While this stream deals with fixed imagery, we show visuals in motion, as narratives.
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Since Kaplan’s and Norton’s (1996) seminal book the Balanced Scorecard (hereafter BSC)
has much been debated. Its promoters have argued that its ability to align controls with
strategy and then behaviours with controls makes it an integrated strategic control device
(Kaplan & Norton, 2006, 2008). As a framework, the BSC has largely spread into firm
practices, consulting and management education1
Considering the BSC a specific tool, given its ultimate integrative ambition, we are
questioning whether and how its integrated dimension makes it a spectacular framework. To
this end, we analyse mainstream approaches to the BSC, adopting Debord’s typology of the
spectacle (Debord, 1967, 1998), as prior accounting research based on his writings have done
so to date (Boje, Rosile, Durant, & Luhman, 2004; Gumb, 2006, 2007; Uddin, Gumb, &
Kasumba, 2011). Our approach offers a reflection on a popular performance management
device embedded both in the business environment and universities. Accordingly, this paper
relies on experiences we have had of the BSC qua consultants, researchers and lecturers. The
research being still in its initial step, it is not yet based on systematic data exploitation.
Exploratory, this paper seeks to have a triple contribution to knowledge. Firstly, we offer a
reflexive approach to critiques addressed to the BSC. Secondly, we aim at contributing to the
stream of research dealing with visuals as a threshold to the spectacle (Davison, 2004, 2010,
2011; Quattrone, 2009; Quattrone & Hopper, 2005). Thirdly, we seek to contribute to
. Some pieces of research present its
potential in value creation (Ittner, Larcker, & Randall, 2003; Crabtree & DeBusk, 2008). On
the other hand, the BSC has much been critiqued: its originality, its conceptual bases as well
as its transferability and operationality have been challenged (Bessire & Baker, 2005;
Bourguignon, Malleret, & Nørreklit, 2004).
1 For instance, a recent international CIMA survey on management accounting tools presents the BSC as “the tool most likely to be adopted soon, and already very popular” (CIMA 2009).
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understanding and conceptualising management accounting as a form of integrated spectacle
(Boje et al., 2004; Gumb, 2007; Uddin et al., 2011). All told, we show how the BSC
incarnates a metaphor of the integrated spectacle in contemporary organisations. We explicate
that the BSC succeeds in reconciling what Debord (1967, 1988) calls the concentrated and
diffused forms of the spectacle through a holistic system linking field routines to strategic
issues. We also demonstrate how the BSC might be subject to détournement, when
illegitimate actors appropriate strategy.
The argument is advanced as follows. We first recall the definition of integration in the BSC,
such as taken for granted by mainstream accounting research. Secondly, we position this
paper vis-à-vis the critical accounting literature on the BSC and visuals as a threshold to the
integrated form of spectacle. Thirdly, we explicate the integrated form of spectacle. Fourthly,
we discuss and reposition our argument vis-à-vis the extant critical accounting literature and
conclude.
1. The concept of integration in the BSC
The BSC largely spread into practices, becoming one of the most (if not the most) popular
performance management systems nowadays. Several authors analysed and commented on
the practicalities of this large diffusion (Ax & Bjørnenak, 2005), which is not the purpose of
our article. The BSC emanated from two Harvard professors, Robert N. Kaplan and David P.
Norton. Both still keep control over the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, a think tank under
their patronage. Of course, it is not a coincidence that Kaplan is the same one who, with
Johnson, engaged in the relevance lost debate in the late eighties (Kaplan & Johson, 1987).
Based on the critique on extant irrelevant approaches, the BSC takes an innovative and rather
sympathetic posture facilitated by its open challenge of finance-focused frameworks. Its
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foundations relate to other fashionable discourses, as for instance on intangible assets or
intellectual capital, the beyond budgeting idea and the employee perspective (Ax &
Bjørnenak, 2005). Nevertheless, the BSC is initially a power instrument, inasmuch as it
clearly claims to provide a way for better strategy execution (Bourguignon et al., 2004). In an
interview with Jürgen Daum (Daum, 2002), Norton insists on the fact that “what we have
learned from working with organizations, is, if you want to execute your strategy, then you
have to put the strategy at the centre of your management system. You should educate people
about the strategy.” This statement underlies the forthcoming leitmotiv concept of strategic
alignment and execution advanced and developed by Kaplan and Norton (2006, 2008). But
two major issues are rarely addressed:
• Strategic execution is considered difficult because of technical or cultural obstacles –
which can be solved by a BSC implementation – rather than for political reasons that
could be linked to resistance from some actors to the dominant strategy.
• When it comes to identify who makes strategy, Norton just suggests it is “you”,
without giving more insights into who this “you” is. Questions about the legitimate
actors are mainly absent from literature, including the critical one.
Despite its innovative posture, the BSC framework intends to provide strategic decision
makers with authority without necessarily making clear on who is legitimate to define
strategy. In such a project integrative ambition is a major stake. As the BSC’s creators
consider that the mere financial dimension fails at aligning, integrating non-financial
dimensions proves to be necessary. The Kaplan & Norton framework not only promotes a
multidimensional and stakeholder compatible view of the firm. It also relates a story linking
those dimensions each other. The causalities on which they rely are subject to numerous
comments and can be schematised as the transformation of intangible assets (those founding
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the fourth dimension) in financial value (first dimension) through internal processes (third
dimension) and customer satisfaction (second dimension). It is not only strategy; it is the
reification of entrepreneurial capitalism (Bourguignon, 2005; Bourguignon & Chiapello,
2005). Integration lies in the links between those diverse topics, the linking argument being
central to the Kaplan & Norton project, i.e. linking BSC with strategy (Kaplan & Norton,
1996), strategy to operations (Kaplan & Norton, 2008) and translating strategy into operations
(Kaplan & Norton, 1996, 2006). Evidence of cases were such conceptual constructions make
sense can be given in that the BSC helps managers to “rationalize (…) decisions to themselves
and to their superiors” (Wiersma, 2009). It is used for educating employees about “the
benefits that emanate from a positive and enduring corporate reputation” (Cravens & Oliver,
2006); it favours social cohesion (Fabri & Fressoz, 2011) at the same time as its properties
“enable strategy to emerge from within the organization” (Jazayeri & Scapens, 2008).
Seemingly, the BSC has an integrative potential. Not only does it help link separate items
with one another, it also fosters new links between people. In this capacity, the BSC can
appear a structuring framework, at least in some circumstances. Moreover it seems that
implementing a BSC results in higher profits (Ittner, Larcker, & Randall, 2003), as “firms
earn greater excess returns after adoption of the BSC than before” (Crabtree & Debusk 2008,
p.8).
More surprisingly, a BSC might help an individual achieve his or her personal targets. For
instance, Jeff Pursglove, who was expecting to become one of the UK’s top senior
bodybuilders, formalised this project through a strategy map and a BSC. The latter played a
significant role (Pursglove, 2006), as he explains: “My Balanced Scorecard told me that I
needed to invest 17.5 of my waking hours each week in the operations and learning and
growth perspectives (plus the time spent travelling to and from the gym). In order to do this, I
was forced to decide which other discretionary activities to curtail (e.g. playing golf, angling,
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gardening etc.)” Here the tool was the media enabling the individual to transform what might
have remained a phantasm into a tangible strategic objective. Pursglove so forced himself as
to integrate a cause and effect teleology, resembling to an “Economic Approach to Human
Behavior” (G. Becker, 1976).
Yet, the linking ability sometimes happens to be difficult. The issues confronting alignment
are also central in the critiques addressed to the BSC. Causalities, as described by Kaplan &
Norton, are strongly challenged. In the mean time, alternative models like the one known
as RAVE are being promoted (Strack & Villus, 2002). The founders of this competing
approach “believe that one of the significant advantages of the RAVE concept is the
systematic quantitative link to the main metric, which is consistently realized in the various
perspectives. The correlation of cause and effect is indeed analysed in the balanced scorecard
approach, but the connections made are mostly qualitative” (Strack & Villis, 2002, p. 156). In
other words, the BSC concept, when translated into practices, fails to keep its promises.
Firstly, links are often weak (Banker, Chang, & Pizzini, 2004). Secondly, the so-called
“learning and growth” dimension is not really about learning and growth (McPhail,
Herrington, & Guilding, 2008). Thirdly, integration is unachieved or incomplete (Vila, Costa,
& Rovira, 2010). Fourthly, nonfinancial metrics have no specific influence on behaviours
other than financial measures (Lau & Sholihin, 2005). Almost any assumption underlying this
model, as well as the promises its founders took, are called into question. Such limitations
tend to justify the emergence of alternative frameworks, supposed to provide better alignment
(Thompson & Marthys, 2008), “adopt a much broader perspective on stakeholders” (Neely,
Marr, Roos, & Gupta, 2003), or use an “integrated methodology for putting the balanced
scorecard into action” (Papalexandris, Ioannou, & Soderquist, 2005). To date, though, the
diffusion of such alternative models is not well documented, and we know little about their
influence on practices.
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Despite those limitations, it would now be a commonplace to mention the success of the BSC
amongst practitioners as well as in academia. This performance management framework is
now well known by consulting firms, IT providers and business schools where it gained the
status of a generic solution addressing all kinds of contexts. Even nonprofits and local
governments (Fabri & Fressoz, 2011; Niven, 2008) have appropriated the BSC. The
integration of nonfinancial perspectives could be an explanation, as this might appeal to a
broader audience than classical accounting / financial devices requiring more technical
expertise. Historically, the concomitant emergence in the mid nineties of ERPs, and especially
SAP R3, may be more than a coincidence (Quattrone & Hopper, 2001, 2005). Allowing a
much higher level of integration, IT systems, when coupled with databases and larger
memories, offer new avenues for the implementation of multidimensional frameworks. Data
storage, extraction and loading are now automated, which enables individuals to gather
indicators, not only from within the firm, but also from the environment. Seen in this way, the
BSC is just a fashion in which the integrative potential offered by ERPs can be designed, i.e. a
framework making sense of disparate data. As this project has to date been subject to
numerous critiques, these must now be exposed.
2. Feeding critiques addressed to the Balanced Scorecard in the accounting literature
This paper seeks to contribute to the critical accounting literature in three ways. Firstly, we
offer a reflexive positioning vis-à-vis critiques addressed to the BSC. Secondly, we feed the
accounting literature building on the spectacular dimension of accounting. Thirdly, extending
this contribution enables us to contribute to understanding the visualising dimension of
accounting.
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2.1. The BSC: an ambiguous ontology
The underlying assumptions of the BSC are challenged, highlighting the weaknesses of the
BSC’s conceptual, logical and epistemological bases (Nørreklit, 2000): “the cause-and-effect
relationship is problematic since claiming that some factors are necessarily profitable is
problematic unless this follows logically from the concepts involved” (p.76). Cause-effect
relationships imply that two items are independent and not logically connected, whilst in the
case of the BSC, the four perspectives can be logically explained and linked together. In the
second place, reasons Nørreklit (2000), the BSC is limited by an ambiguous relationship to
time due to a necessary lag between the definition of objectives, measurement and the effects
of corrective actions. It transpires that the BSC conflates measures occurring at different
points in time and presents them as cause and effects. However, the delayed effect of a
corrective action can be known by definition only later on. Managers thereby have no
guarantee that these corrective actions will have the expected effect on the four dimensions of
their BSC. This leads to question the consistency of metrics used within one perspective as
well as across the four perspectives. More generally, Nørreklit (2000) questions whether the
BSC can operate as a credible strategic control device. For strategy control to be worked out,
the four perspectives should bring insights into the organisation situation vis-à-vis the
economic, social and political environment in which it operates. Objectives, metrics and
comparisons relating at least to suppliers and public authorities would be more than
appropriate and eventually are absent. Thereby the BSC conceptually neglects major features
of strategy and cannot succeed in controlling strategic management.
Arguably, these conceptual weaknesses stress that the BSC, far from being an efficient
management and strategy control device, is the offspring of a certain ideology (Bessire &
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Baker, 2005; Bourguignon et al., 2004). When compared to the French Tableau de bord, the
BSC appears as a way of thinking assuming that any action undertaken responds to
microeconomic concerns. Financial measures relate to profit maximisation, while non-
financial measures stress utility function maximisation (Bourguignon, 2005). Accordingly,
such a management control device can only be generic and claim to apply to most situations
without being discussed and agreed upon. At best, performance indicators can be negotiated.
In no way are the four perspectives as they are part of the story; some can be considered as
missing (Bourguignon et al., 2004). For this microeconomic ideology to be applied the BSC
can only be imposed by managers on the entire organisation, implying that hierarchic
structures be adopted. It transpires from this critique that the implications of its
microeconomic ideology preclude the BSC from integrating pertinent strategic issues and
measures and be a systematic appropriate management control device. It can apply to some
contexts but remains hardly transferable to other situations (e.g. nonprofits or public sector
organisations).
As the BSC has no strong theoretical foundations and is underpinned by an ideology
preventing it from being easily transferable, its four dimensions appear as a rhetorical device
aiming at convincing managers (Nørreklit, 2003). The visual representation of how the four
dimensions are intertwined and the labels every student and manager knows very well make
the BSC, not necessarily a pertinent management control device, but an argument to pass on a
management idea. In negative, the loose diffusion of Beyond Budgeting can be partly
explained by its lack of visualisation and apparently working concepts (S. Becker, Messner, &
Schäffer, 2009).
Starting from the contention that the BSC has largely spread, we are drifting from these
critiques. We feed the critical accounting literature on the BSC by questioning whether and
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how its integrated dimension makes the BSC a spectacular framework. We expect the notion
of integrated spectacle to bring fresher insights into the notion of integration which prior
literature presents as ambiguous.
2.2. The visualising power of the BSC over accounting and society
As the BSC has spread through strong rhetorical devices amongst which visualisation,
questioning whether and how its integrated dimension makes the BSC a spectacular
framework should contribute beyond the mere BSC literature. We seek to contribute more
generally to an emerging stream dealing with visuals.
A management accounting device, the BSC intrinsically plays a role similar to other
generalised accounting systems and technologies, e.g. double entry bookkeeping (DEB) and
ERPs. Double entry bookkeeping rests upon the balancing of records expressing in visual and
memorisable quantitative (monetary) terms the organisation story (Quattrone, 2009). Like
DEB, the BSC enables to categorise the world, not in two but in four, using labels easy to
remember: “accounting inscriptions (in budgets, activity based costing systems, balanced
scorecards, and the like) mean little if not enacted through specific orthopraxis which, in the
context of this paper and early modern treatises, was related to the art of memory and
rhetoric” (Quattrone, 2009, p.112). The BSC, like any other accounting technique, especially
ERPs, rests upon an imagery that enables managers to make events integrative of memory of
the past and the future (Quattrone & Hopper, 2005). Seemingly, the power of accounting –
and de facto the BSC – lies in its capacity of transforming ideas, words and events into
images (tables, diagrams, graphs, etc.) put together by a manager directing the scenery.
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The notion of spectacular imagery in management accounting and financial reporting is
reinforced by the fact that accounting operates as the liturgy of business (Davison, 2004,
2011; McKernan & Kosmala, 2007). Accounting figures, through diagrams, tables and
graphs, can be compared to ceiling glass in churches, sacralising the place in which they
operate (Davison, 2004; Dean, 2007). Knowing that religious liturgy is a form of spectacle in
which divinity is revealed and explained to people (Latour, 2002, 2010), we can consider that
the BSC, like other accounting devices and practices, offers a similar form of spectacle.
Arguably, accounting so pervades the sub-conscious of organisational actors as to inculcate
them notions of profitability, return or accountability (Rahaman, Everett, & Neu, 2007).
Accordingly, understanding the conceptual bases, forms and practices of the BSC as a
spectacle could enrich the knowledge we have of the visualising power of accounting.
3. Theoretical framework: the BSC as integrated form of the spectacle
The concept of the spectacle2
2 For a summary of former conceptions of the spectacle, see
(Debord, 1967), as built by the situationists (the Situs), is very
well known in artistic and political arenas and streams. It also inspired academics in diverse
areas, including economics and management. Gumb (2004, 2007) and Uddin & ali (2011)
recently reminded us a of few accounting pieces of research drawing on the concept of the
spectacle. Only Uddin & ali (2011) clearly use the typology made by Debord (1967, 1988),
defining the integrated spectacle as a continuation of the concentrated and the diffuse forms of
spectacle. The concentrated form, present in bureaucratic and totalitarian regimes, is
“attended by a permanent violence” (Debord 1967, t. 42) based on propaganda and struggle
for resistance: likewise, the diffuse form is softer and is generally “associated with the
http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/spectacle2.htm
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abundance of commodities, with the undisturbed development of modern capitalism” (Debord
1967, t. 42). The concentrated form of the spectacle can be instanced by the German and
Russian dictatorial regimes; while the diffused form can me incarnated by the American way
of life and its mass consumption. These two forms of spectacle stand in opposition to each
other. Yet, they can be reconciled through the integrated form that Debord (1988, V) views as
“integrated itself into reality to the same extent as it was describing it, and that it was
reconstructing it as it was describing it.” It is much more efficient and pervasive, as it
“spread itself to the point where it now permeates all reality” (Debord 1988, V).
Out of these extreme situations, the concentrated and diffused forms of the spectacle can be
considered ideal-types that are rarely observed. Debord instances this point by showing that
the integrated type appeared in France and Italy in the seventies, when state capitalism
became the dominant scheme. This integrated form resembles a modern conception of the
spectacle operating as “the autocratic reign of an economy of commodities which acquired an
unaccountable sovereignty, and all the new techniques of governance which accompanies this
reign” (Debord, 1988, II). Panama’s former leader Manuel Noriega is presented by Debord as
a typical representative of that form of spectacle3
The spectacular domination was to be treated with a working antidote that could be found in
situations. For recollection, the situation was a post-Dadaist way to promote some form of
resistance – through carnival, theatrics or détournement – to the spectacular domination.
These resistance practices now tend to be hijacked in the integrated scene where listed firms
: he simultaneously showed high abilities in
business relations with capitalistic authorities and some popularity as an anti-imperialist hero.
The general confusion emanating from integrated spectacle makes it complex to understand
and to keep under control, as compared to the concentrated and diffuse forms.
3 Uddin & al. (2011) consider Berlusconi a more recent symbol of the integrative form of the spectacle.
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fund anti-establishment or government-controlled agencies encourage protesting movements.
Henceforth has the situation become more and more difficult to scrutinise.
There lays the most significant specificity of Debord vis-à-vis his main follower Baudrillard,
who extended situationist theories with his concepts of simulacra and hyperreality. Whereas
the early Situs held the ambitious project of transforming our lives via the creation of
situations, Baudrillard’s political economy of the sign (Baudrillard, 1972) depicts a world in
which the spectacle became the reality, and the map the territory. Any revolutionary project
therefore proves to be very difficult, if not impossible. The spectacle achieves its aim: it
reconciles bureaucratic centralism and participation, separation and team spirit, alienation and
empowerment. Belief in a potential for creating situations is what distinguishes the early Situs
from later comments by Debord. While the early situationists were mostly avant-garde artists,
Debord was considered a realist social theorist. Baudrillard and Debord stand in opposition,
also because the former had some influence on the academic accounting debate (Macintosh &
ali, 2000; Mattessich, 2003): the simulacrum and hyperreality concepts are applied to a
critical interpretation of the income and capital as accounting figures.
When the realm of the spectacle achieves its integrated form, it expands by integrating more
and more dimensions, e.g. society, environment or sustainability. In these situations, numbers
always play a role, as “the technological innovation movement is an old one and is part of
capitalist society (…). But since he took its most recent acceleration (following the second
World War), it strengthens further the spectacular authority as it reveals everyone bounded
by numerous experts, by their calculations and their self-satisfied judgments on those
calculations” (Debord 1988, V). Paradoxically post-modern technologies offer space for new
resistance opportunities leading to the dérive and détournement of the contested object
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individuals’ actions so inevitably transform the original intent as to make it impossible to
arrive at destination (Derrida, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c).
With the shift to the new Millennium, Dérive and détournement have been presented as
significant trends in the “digital situationist” Internet environment, incarnated by hackers
(O'Neill, 2008). Uncontrollable IT-driven networks nowadays allow integrative frameworks
on which political legitimacy might be challenged in favour of more or less naïve geeks4
.
Some critical academic literature (Compton & Comor 2007, Welsh & al. 2010) uses Debord’s
works so as to point out a dialectics between social control and resistance. Such dialectics can
be found in respectively the news as spectacle through the 8 Live concerts and the Higher
Education debate in the US. In the latter case, market forces suggested that curricula would be
ranked in accordance with the marginal dollar that a degree would enable a graduate student
to earn. Universities would be regulated by standards such as accreditation enabling to
compare them with each other. In the competition for attracting students, faculty and funds,
universities would closely scrutinise what the others do, developing a form of social control.
These controls as well as the logic of market forces were subject to opposition from faculty
and students enrolled (Kamuf, 2007).
4. Discussion and implications
In several respects, the BSC can be seen as any management accounting device having largely
spread into practices. Most of the critiques reason that the BSC, through the visuals offered by
the quasi-panoptical representation of the four perspectives surrounding vision and strategy
4 The recent Wiki Leaks affairs and the massive diplomatic messages disclosures, or the role of social networks like Facebook in popular movements (e.g. Tunisia and Egypt) might be presented as exemplar of such trends.
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placed in its centre, is mainly a rhetorical device for the diffusion of management accounting
images. For critics, the BSC has then acquired the status of a ritual, a hyperreality, a liturgy
(Davison, 2010). The visual representation offered by the interplay between its four
dimensions and strategy could is comparable to T accounts in double entry bookkeeping
(Quattrone, 2009). More than any other accounting technology, the BSC appears as a vector
of conviction. Conviction is not achieved by a charismatic personality, as it could be found in
concentrated forms of spectacle in which a Higher Stakeholder shows the way. Neither is it
merely a collection of images representative of a diffuse form in which nobody would know
who initiates BSC approaches. At least – in its normative form – it is an advanced
concentrated form, like it is depicted by Debord (1998, IV): “concerning the concentrated
side, its directive centre now became occult: nevermore one places here a known leader, a
clear ideology”.
The spectacular dimension of the BSC in itself is nothing new: as any other managerial
technique, it generates enthusiasm, raises critiques and contributes to the renewal of our
representations of organisations. However, the originality of our argument lies in our
contention that the BSC is not an ordinary management accounting device, and this for three
reasons. Firstly, its technical and normative aspects are rather poor. Most of the aggregates
and indicators in a BSC, to be analysed, require no specific skills. When it is coupled with
user-friendly software, the output is much easier to analyse than financial reporting sheets.
Secondly, the operational content of a BSC is liable to concern every manager, every division
in the organisation. Thirdly, the BSC tells a story, not only on historical figures explaining the
raison d’être of the organisation. The BSC mainly relates to the organisation’s future and
imagery can operate as a map conveying the journey thither.
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This peculiarly ambitious status of the BSC relies on its integrative dimension, while
traditional management devices are either concentrated – e.g. accounting figures, financial
metrics, value creation ratios – or more diffuse – e.g. reputation, intangible values, social
responsibility (Uddin et al., 2011). The BSC reconciles both forms in providing a story
linking them in a holistic framework. As the two forms of the spectacle no longer stand in
opposition to each other, any historical conflict, such as opposition of capital and labour, has
been eradicated. The integrated form of spectacle enabled by the BSC leads all organisational
actors to be connected to each other through a strategic cascade (Gioia & Thomas, 1996)
whose ownership is diffuse, while controls remain more or less considered concentrated
management accounting (Cravens & Oliver, 2006).
In its essence, the BSC seems to offer the organisation a unitary status of an entity
dispossessed from all its previous contradictions on property rights, value sharing or resource
allocation. As the questions addressed by finance-focused performance appraisals are
potentially sources of conflicts, the BSC precludes disputes and tensions. This ontology of the
BSC – an integrated spectacle – enables us to understand Kaplan’s and Norton’s journey. As
they first designed a management control device aiming at better strategic alignment, they
extended with strategic mapping (Kaplan & Norton, 2000, 2004) and execution premium
(Kaplan & Norton, 2006, 2008).
Are we critical or not is no more the debate, as the ability to critique is also an indicator. In
opposition to more or less standardised accounting principles, the BSC allows a lot of
freedom in the choice of indicators. Once an indicator shows alarming results can it be deleted
and replaced with more politically correct substitutes. Such a depersonalisation of strategic
discourse paradoxically leaves room for manoeuvre. BSC implementation often involves
several managers from different divisions and it seems difficult to engage higher strategic
authorities (e.g. the board) in the process (Drew & Kaye, 2007). Accordingly, middle staff
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and line managers, who are now likely to promote their own indicators and introduce these
into the BSC system, can acquire strategic legitimacy. Such derivative potential is pinpointed
(Ittner & Larcker, 2003), when “subjectivity in the balanced scorecard plan allowed area
directors to incorporate factors other than the scorecard measures in performance
evaluations, to change evaluation criteria from quarter to quarter, to ignore measures that
were predictive of future financial performance, and to weight measures that were not
predictive of desired results” (p. 753). But resistance and subjectivity might also be seen as
key success factors of a BSC implementation: “The typical structure of the project team
involves a steering committee, a team of experts (Financial, HR and IT experts), a Quality
Assurance team and the main project team. We have established that the project team should
encompass no more than eight employees of various hierarchical levels (…). We should also
note that constructive arguments have been recognized when both employees supporting the
BSC initiative and others more skeptical of this endeavour are included in the project team.”
(Papalexandris & ali, p. 218). These points are critical as they highlight the twofold specificity
of the integrated spectacle as an interpretive framework for the BSC.
- Firstly, the BSC places the critique far beyond extant approaches focusing on the
selection of KPIs (financial versus non financial), the balance amongst the four
dimensions or their rhetorical aspects (Nørreklit, 2000, 2003). The caveats we address
are not about instrumental limitations of the BSC, but on the influence it has through
its integrative dimension. Arguably, its main strength lies in the integrated form of the
spectacle so characterising it as to reconcile authority, strategy and control.
- Secondly, we integrate the two aspects of interpretive critique of the BSC: alignment
(Ittner et al., 2003) and ideological dimension underpinned by the ideology it carries
on (Bessire & Baker, 2005; Bourguignon, 2005; Bourguignon & Chiapello, 2005;
Bourguignon et al., 2004). The former concerns a concentrated conception of the
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spectacle, where the BSC is a controlling device aiming – successfully or not – at
influencing behaviours. On the other hand, the latter refers to a communicative BSC
(re)telling – with user-friendly images – the story of the American win-win company.
Moreover, if the BSC in practice actually proves to be less integrated than it claims to be, it
nevertheless remains integrative in its intention, in the story it tells. By chance, integration
and alignment are far from perfect, and critique is reversed: field managers might drift the
BSC for their own sake and thereby create situations against bureaucratic spectacle. We
contend here that the BSC is a much more open device. Whereas the notions of income and
capital mainly concern financial experts, such as analysts, standard setters, accountants,
auditors or tax regulators, the BSC integrates diverse indicators supposed to appeal to a
broader audience. Even though escape from income and capital is made possible through a
not-for-profit posture, escape from an integrated framework including all kind of metrics is
more difficult. Yet, some of these metrics are generally regarded as opposed to profit. It might
also be easier for a field manager to redesign the content of his or her BSC than its profit and
loss figures. Debord often evokes the ability of the integrated spectacle to foster participation
rather than opposition. As everyone partakes in the construction, diffusion and use of a BSC,
there is no more need for struggle and conflict. We thereby follow Uddin’s et al.’s (2011)
analysis of Participatory Budgeting as it was promoted, namely through Aid Agencies, as a
way to introduce integrated spectacle in Uganda, formerly more concerned by the
concentrated form. We also adopt the relativistic position of researchers questioning the
achievement of the integrative dimension of the BSC in which data indicate that there is wide
variation in the effectiveness of BSC in providing integrative information (Chenhall, 2005;
Meyer, 2002). This suggests that the adoption of BSC is not a sufficiently strong indicator
that performance measurement systems will provide integrative information (Chenhall, 2005;
p. 415).
19
Figure 1 summarises our approach to the integrated form of the spectacle through the merger
of the concentrated and the diffuse into the BSC.
Figure 1. The triangle of the spectacle
Concentrated form Diffused form
Alignment Image
Control Communication
Integrated form
Integrative
Story-telling framework
In a bureaucratic organisation, corresponding to a concentrated form of the spectacle,
managers are hold accountable for metrics linked to their status as responsibility centres. Are
they considered profit centres, they account for their margins; are they investment centres
they are supposed to provide satisfactory ROIs... Or as cost centres they are judged on their
ability to meet more or less flexible standards.
In a more diffused form of spectacle, in companies driven by customers, networks and
markets, managers hold local leadership positions where their communicative abilities and
their influence on behaviours are central. Attention is focused on “intangible” stakes,
serendipity, entrepreneurship, reputation.
In the integrated form of the spectacle, both perspectives are bundled. A manager is
accountable for financial and operational metrics. In the BSC, he or she is concomitantly
supposed to reduce costs – including for instance hidden costs like absenteeism – AND to
meet socially responsible targets obliging him or her to strive with diversity by hiring more
20
women, disabled people or ethnic minorities. Such a conduct might precisely provoke higher
absenteeism. The story could resemble a schizophrenic P.K. Dick like novel. Even though the
BSC does not integrate any contradictions in the story it tells about win-win causalities: social
responsibility policy generates good reputation as an intangible asset, with better employee
empowerment, which helps the company for maximising internal process efficiency, to satisfy
customers and finally increase financial performance.
In both ideal typical forms of the spectacle, dilemmas like the one related above could lead to
conflicts opposing an expense-limitative obsession held by profit centre managers and the
financial function to a good thinking but costly human resource strategy. Situations could be
the occasion to solve those conflicts through punctual moments of negotiation, dispute and
arbitrage. The introduction – or integration – of diverse metrics in the BSC tends to automate
the process and the critical moment becomes the introduction of an indicator in the
framework. Our contention that the BSC integrates and solves tensions resonates with the
idea developed in The New Spirit of Capitalism that one strength of Capitalism lies in its
ability to expand through the constant absorption of its critiques (Boltanski & Chiapello,
1999).
Conclusion
In this paper we are questioning whether and how the integrated dimension of the Balanced
Scorecard makes it a spectacular framework for performance management. We answer our
research question by analysing the mainstream and critical literatures on the BSC. In this
paper, we depart from both streams, trying to understand how the BSC in its essence can
solve tensions inherent to organisational life and performance management. We thereby
neither critique nor promote the BSC; we merely try to approach ontology of this
management accounting device. Our analysis contributes to the accounting literature in three
21
ways. Firstly, we contribute to the literature on the BSC by showing that in its essence, the
BSC offers the organisation a unitary status of an entity dispossessed from all its previous
contradictions on property rights, value sharing or resource allocation. It acts like a metaphor
(Cornelissen, relating the message of an organisation without leader, and influences
behaviours as “massage” (McLuhan, 1964). Secondly, we contribute to the critical literature
referring to Debord’s writings. We show the relevance, not only of the forms of spectacle as
depicted one by one, but also of the transformation and dialectics from one form to another,
with the potential role of the situation. Thirdly, dealing with the spectacle enables us to
contribute to the literature on the visuals. While this stream deals with fixed imagery, we
show visuals in motion, as narratives.
The main limitation of this paper lies first in our non-systematic approach of the field. More
generally, the BSC – in promotional as well as in critical postures – is often studied through
its conceptual and instrumental aspects: the four perspectives, the financial versus non-
financial metrics, the top down alignment etc. There is much less evidence on cases where the
BSC is used in drifted ways, as a self-control device (remember the bodybuilder) or a medium
for creating situations. However, we suggest further research in the following areas. Firstly, as
our paper deals with the BSC as an idea, we consider it would be necessary to address its
spectacular dimension through an empirical study of practices or discourses. Secondly, our
developments on the integrated form of the spectacle could be more broadly used in
management accounting research, following and enriching Uddin’s et al.’s (2001) work. We
claim for a research agenda on the BSC going beyond Kaplan & Norton’s top down
methodology, including works on situations met in practice with concurrent individual BSCs
conveying different mindsets.
22
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