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Bundling control
Bundling management control innovations
innovations
A field study of organisational experimenting
with total quality management and the 59
balanced scorecard
Sven Modell
The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to examine how organisational experimenting with total
quality management (TQM) and the balanced scorecard affects the bundling of design characteristics
associated with these innovations in a Swedish central government agency.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts an exploratory, longitudinal case study
approach which builds on and extends the management fad and fashion literature.
Findings – While both innovations encountered considerable implementation problems, they
continued to exercise a lingering influence on the “new” performance management system emerging in
the focal organisation. The original adoption of the two innovations can be explained from a
traditional management fashion perspective. However, the subsequent development of performance
management features a more complex mix of explanatory factors and highlights how the bundling
phenomenon is entangled with managerial learning processes. This resulted in a less linear trajectory
of change than that predicted by prior research on the notion of bundling.
Research implications – The paper contributes to the literature on management fads and fashions
by refining its conception of the role of managers of adopting organisations and organisational
adoption, implementation and rejection of innovations.
Originality/value – The paper constitutes a first attempt to examine in greater detail how
organisational experimenting with contemporary management control innovations affects the process
of bundling in an individual organisation.
Keywords Balanced scorecard, Fashion industry, Management accounting, Total quality management
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The past two decades have seen a wave of innovations in management accounting and
control practices, notably epitomised by such notions as activity based costing/activity
based management and the balanced scorecard to mention but a few novel techniques.
The adoption and diffusion of such techniques have been extensively examined in the
private (e.g. Bjørnenak, 1997; Brown et al., 2004; Gosselin, 1997; Malmi, 1999;
Speckbacher et al., 2003) as well as the public sector (e.g. Chan, 2004; Jackson and
Previous versions of this paper were presented at the annual conference of the Accounting and
Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, the Gold Coast, and the 5th Asia Pacific Accounting, Auditing &
Accountability Journal
Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting Conference, Auckland. The author is grateful to Paul Vol. 22 No. 1, 2009
Andon, Christian Ax, Jane Baxter, Rob Chenhall, Anders Grönlund, Sue Llewellyn, Habib pp. 59-90
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Mahama, Hanne Nørreklit and Lee Parker for insightful comments. The research was funded by 0951-3574
the Swedish Research Council. DOI 10.1108/09513570910923015
AAAJ Lapsley, 2003; Lapsley and Wright, 2004; Northcott and France, 2005). An important
22,1 source of inspiration for much of this research has been the literature on management
fads and fashions (e.g. Abrahamson, 1991, 1996) suggesting that managerial
innovations are popularised as a set of conceptual components, which are more or less
successfully adopted by organisations. A closely related research topic is that of how
conceptual components, or design characteristics associated with different
60 management accounting and control innovations are bundled together as
innovations evolve (Ax and Bjørnenak, 2005, 2007; Bjørnenak and Olson, 1999). The
notion of “bundling” implies that elements of different innovations are re-combined
into “new” innovation packages in the process of adapting these to a particular context
(Ax and Bjørnenak, 2007). It is thus a potentially important analytical category for
understanding why and how fashionable innovations become implicated in
organisational control practices.
From a traditional fad/fashion perspective, bundling has primarily been described
as a supply-driven phenomenon as it is used by propagators of particular innovations
(e.g. consultants, trade associations) to increase their attractiveness to potential
adopters (Ax and Bjørnenak, 2005, 2007). However, this perspective has recently been
criticised for neglecting the complexities of change associated with local adaptation of
innovations in a particular organisational setting (Clark, 2004; Czarniawska and Sevón,
2004; Jones and Dugdale, 2002; Mueller and Carter, 2005). The majority of empirical
research following the fad and fashion perspectives has focused on broad diffusion and
adoption patterns and relies heavily on survey data (e.g. Bjørnenak, 1997; Lapsley and
Wright, 2004; Malmi, 1999) or secondary sources, such as references to particular
innovations in professional or trade publications (e.g. Abrahamson and Fairchild, 1999;
Ax and Bjørnenak, 2005; Carson et al., 2000; Giroux, 2006; Mazza and Alvarez, 2000).
Moreover, few of these studies have examined the connections between different
innovations in any greater detail. Hence we have very limited knowledge of how
management accounting and control innovations interact as adopting organisations
implement these and how this affects the need to re-conceptualise the bundling
phenomenon.
In the present paper, we address this gap in the management accounting literature
inspired by the fad/fashion perspective by viewing the bundling phenomenon as an
outcome of organisational experimenting with novel accounting and control
techniques over an extended period of time (Andon et al., 2007). Focusing on two
innovations that have gained increasing popularity over the past two decades –
namely total quality management (TQM) and the balanced scorecard – we examine
how these have affected the development of control practices in a Swedish central
government agency. While drawing on the literature on management fads and
fashions, we explicate how this needs to be extended to capture the complexity of the
bundling phenomenon.
We start by outlining how the development of TQM and the balanced scorecard can
be understood from a fad/fashion perspective and elaborate on the critique informing
our analysis of the notion of bundling. We then account for the research method
applied. The empirical part of the paper starts with an overview of the supply of
management innovations in Swedish central government before examining how such
innovations have evolved in the case organisation. The concluding section summarises
our main findings and implications for future research.
2. Conceptual framework Bundling control
The literature on management fads and fashions seeks to explain diffusion processes innovations
based on the assumption that organisational adoption of innovations is determined by
imitation rather than rational choice (Newell et al., 2001). Drawing heavily on DiMaggio
and Powell (1983), Abrahamson (1991) introduced the fad and fashion perspectives as
complements to the efficient choice perspective, suggesting that adoption results from
reasoned cost/benefit-centred decisions, and the forced selection perspective, according 61
to which adoption is driven by the need to comply with regulatory powers. The fad and
fashion perspectives differ, however, in that the former sees similar organisations
within a particular group of adopters as the main source of imitation while paying little
attention to the origins of innovations. On the other hand, the fashion perspective
emphasises the active involvement of fashion-setters, such as influential consulting
firms and other expert powers, typically located outside the group of adopting
organisations in the creation of management fashions (see also Abrahamson, 1996).
This has led a number of authors to deepen the analysis of the strategies applied by
promulgators of management fashions in disseminating innovations (e.g. Benders and
van Veen, 2001; Collins, 2000; Jackson, 2001; Kieser, 1997).
Against this backdrop, it is useful to start a discussion of how TQM and the
balanced scorecard may be bundled by examining the relationships between these
innovations as they have been portrayed by key propagators. This leads to an interest
in the rhetoric invoked as well as the constitutive design elements of these innovations
(Ax and Bjørnenak, 2007).
TQM emerged as an increasingly fashionable management innovation in response to
the lacking competitiveness of US manufacturing industry in the 1980s and especially
the perceived superiority of Japanese firms in delivering high-quality products in
accordance with customer demands while achieving operating efficiency (Giroux, 2006).
Thus, the rhetoric surrounding the promulgation of TQM tends to be loaded with
references to the need for management practices fostering customer orientation and
satisfaction (Dean and Bowen, 1994; Mouritsen, 1997). The paramount role of the
customer is also reflected in studies teasing out the core design characteristics of TQM as
specified by key propagators (Anderson et al., 1994; Hackman and Wageman, 1995).
Based on the views of an expert panel, Anderson et al. (1994) condensed the 14 TQM
principles prescribed by Deming (1986) into a smaller set of key concepts emphasising
the role of visionary leadership for stimulating cooperation and learning as vehicles of
process management, continuous improvement and employee fulfilment with the
ultimate objective of enhancing customer satisfaction. Similarly, Hackman and
Wageman (1995) revisited a number of classical TQM writings and identified the
necessity of meeting customer needs as the primary motivation for TQM. Internal
organisational practices, such as continuous improvement efforts, cross-functional
teamwork and the development of process-orientated management techniques, were
portrayed as subsidiary to this overriding priority.
While achievement of customer satisfaction or the fulfilment of customer needs are
generally perceived as an overriding design priority, it is also possible to identify some
consensus about the management control techniques required for the realisation of
TQM. The development of an organisational climate conducive to cross-functional
cooperation and process-orientated management is typically considered to necessitate
lateral, rather than hierarchically orientated control practices (see, e.g. Chenhall, 2008;
AAAJ Munro and Hatherly, 1993). Popular conceptualisations of TQM emphasise the need for
22,1 mechanisms supporting lateral control, such as the empowerment of managers with
cross-functional process responsibilities, team-based rewards and use of non-financial
goals and performance measures indicating how internal processes and performance
improvements contribute to customer satisfaction (see Hackman and Wageman, 1995;
Johnson, 1992).
62 Similar to TQM, the origins of the balanced scorecard can also be traced to the
growing concerns with the decline of US manufacturing industry in the 1980s, which
was arguably exacerbated by the over-reliance on short-term, historically focused and
predominantly financial performance indicators (Johnson and Kaplan, 1987). However,
while recognizing the importance of satisfying customers and achieving operating
efficiency the rhetoric of leading balanced scorecard propagators, such as Kaplan and
Norton (1996), emphasises the alignment of performance management with the
overriding objective of maximising shareholder value (Ax and Bjørnenak, 2005).
Another key element of the rhetoric surrounding the balanced scorecard is that such
long-term, strategic goal alignment is achievable by managing the causal relationships
between underlying performance drivers (Nørreklit, 2000, 2003). This is accomplished
by disaggregating the strategic vision and objectives of companies to a set of causally
linked indicators representing financial performance, customers’ views, internal
business processes and learning aspects stimulating long-term growth of the firm
(Kaplan and Norton, 1996, 2001)[1].
In contrast to popular conceptualisations of TQM, emphasising the need for lateral
control, the balanced scorecard has a predominantly hierarchical orientation. This is
notably manifested by the suggestions that it constitutes a useful mechanism for
disaggregating organisation-wide objectives and targets into personal scorecards for
managers and employees at various hierarchical levels and that strategic goal alignment
is reinforced by “cascading” indicators up and down the organisational hierarchy
(Kaplan and Norton, 1996, 2001; see also Bukh and Malmi, 2005). While references to
TQM in Kaplan and Norton’s (1996, 2001) earlier works were rather tangential, more
recent advances (e.g. Kaplan and Norton, 2004) deal more extensively with it and portray
it as complementary to the balanced scorecard. However, this argument mainly rests on
the suggestion that indicators incorporated in the balanced scorecard may support the
process improvement efforts embedded in TQM while the more fundamental challenges
of reconciling hierarchical and lateral logics of control are largely eschewed (Chenhall,
2008; Hackman and Wageman, 1995)[2]. Although the possibilities of linking
performance evaluation and rewards to team performance are occasionally recognised
(e.g. Kaplan and Norton, 2001), more critical assessments suggest that the balanced
scorecard primarily reflects individualistic values pivoting on the notions of fair
contracts and unequivocal accountability relationships with the individual as the key
organisational agent and object of control (Bourguignon et al., 2004; Nørreklit et al., 2006).
Table I summarises this brief review of the relationships between TQM and the
balanced scorecard with particular reference to how overriding and subsidiary design
priorities, reflecting the fundamental motifs of these innovations, are linked to key
management control features. However, merely relying on popular conceptualisations of
fashionable management innovations is insufficient for understanding how these may be
bundled. While an inspection of Table I suggests that TQM and the balanced scorecard
represent largely incompatible logics of control, empirical research indicates that reliance
Bundling control
TQM Balanced scorecard
innovations
Overriding design priority Customer satisfaction/fulfilment Shareholder value/financial
of customer needs performance
Subsidiary design priorities Continuous improvement Eliciting customer views
Process orientation Internal process improvement
Cooperation and learning Learning and growth 63
Key management control Lateral orientation: Hierarchical orientation:
features Cross-functional process Strategic goal alignment
responsibilities Table I.
Team-based rewards Individualistic control and Core design
accountability characteristics of popular
Non-financial goals and “Cascading” of causally linked conceptualisations of
performance measures financial and non-financial TQM and the balanced
performance measures scorecard
3. Research method
The following empirical study is set in the context of Swedish central government and,
more specifically, in a central government agency – the Swedish National Board of
Student Aid (SNBSA) – experimenting with TQM as well as the balanced scorecard.
This case study is part of a larger research programme examining how recent central
government reforms have influenced the development of performance management
and control practices of central government agencies (see Modell et al., 2007; Modell
and Grönlund, 2007). This research programme entailed extensive interactions with
senior civil servants and managerial staff at different levels of a broad range of central
government agencies. In combination with archival data sources and prior empirical
studies, this research provides valuable insights into the context of central government
reforms.
While being part of this broader, field-based data collection, the SNBSA was
selected for deeper analysis for the present study as it has experimented with multiple
management innovations over a relatively short time-span as well as adapting to
changes in the Government’s reform agenda. This offers a promising opportunity to
examine the complexities associated with the bundling phenomenon in an individual
organisation. However, it should be noted that the importance of the concept of
bundling as a metaphor for understanding the process of change in this particular case
emerged inductively during the process of data collection and analysis and became the
object of deeper probing as the research progressed (Ahrens and Chapman, 2006).
Overall, the case study was of an exploratory, non-interventionist nature (Lukka, 2005).
Data collection in the SNBSA took place between 2004 and 2007 and primarily
comprised semi-structured interviews, group discussions and a number of secondary
data sources. At the outset of the study, the organisation was in the midst of devising a
“new” performance management system. Our initial contacts with the organisation
indicated that a small number of headquarters staff had been instrumental in these
changes and prior attempts to implement TQM- and balanced scorecard-inspired
control techniques. Our first round of interviews (in October 2004) aimed at probing
into their experiences of these innovations and were relatively open-ended to allow
interviewees to elaborate freely on what they saw as the driving forces behind adoption
of various innovations, their benefits and the problems encountered during
implementation. Similarly, in early 2005, the managers of three regional offices of
varying size and geographical location were interviewed to examine the wider
experiences of the innovations concerned at the operating level. Later that year, we also
interviewed the incoming Director-General and the government official in charge of
monitoring the performance of the SNBSA to provide complementary perspectives on
the wider governance and reform context of the organization.
A preliminary analysis of these interviews and documents provided by the SNBSA Bundling control
(e.g. internal planning documents, memos and presentation material describing its innovations
experiences of the innovations) revealed some interesting connections between the
organisation’s experimenting with different management techniques and its ongoing
development of strategic planning and performance management practices. To
examine these connections in greater detail, additional interviews were conducted in
2006 and 2007 with individuals extensively involved in past and ongoing change 65
initiatives at various levels. These interviews were more focused to probe into issues
emerging as particularly critical in the earlier research phases (a sample of interview
questions used in the later research phases is given in the Appendix). Hence we
introduced a longitudinal element in data collection allowing us to gradually sharpen
our focus on issues of key interest and gain a deeper understanding of emerging
control practices. The distribution of interviewees across different interview phases is
given in Table II. Following this iterative interview process, five of the 16 interviewees
were interviewed on more than one occasion.
The interviews typically lasted between one and two hours. To stimulate an open
dialogue and avoid bias related to potentially controversial or sensitive issues we
refrained from taping the interviews[3]. However, extensive notes were taken and
transcribed immediately after each interview. To compensate for the lack of tape
recordings we adopted a systematic approach of respondent validation by returning our
transcripts to the interviewees and asking for feedback. While this proved useful for
stimulating further dialogue and probing deeper into certain issues (Bloor, 1978), we are
Ministerial level
Civil servant in charge of performance monitoring £ 1
Headquarters staff
Director general £ £ 2
Chief financial officer 1 £ 1
Chief financial officer 2a £ 1
Strategist 1 £ £ £ 3
Strategist 2 £ £ 2
Strategist 3 £ 1
Controller £ 1
Staff specialist 1 £ 1
Staff specialist 2 £ 1
Staff specialist 3 £ 1
Staff specialist 4 £ 1
Manager, student grants and loans function £ 1
Office managers
Office manager 1 £ £ £ 3
Office manager 2 £ £ 2 Table II.
Office manager 3 £ 1 Distribution of
Total 12 5 6 23 interviewees across
different interview
a
Note: Chief Financial Officer 2 succeeded Chief Financial Officer 1 in 2005 phases
AAAJ unable to use longer quotes from the interviews but mainly reproduce shorter statements
22,1 and expressions for illustrative purposes. The interview transcripts and additional
feedback were analysed based on a grid technique (Yin, 1984) whereby data were coded
and explanatory patterns were mapped across various parts of the organisation.
As a final means of validation and probing into emerging interpretations, we
organised feedback sessions, based on preliminary case study narratives and oral
66 presentations, with key informants on two occasions (April 2006 and October 2007).
Especially the latter of these sessions, taking the form of a group discussion with six
headquarters staff, proved valuable for shedding additional light on the process of
bundling and the unfolding implementation of the “new” performance management
system. The meaning of the bundling metaphor was presented to the participants, who
were subsequently encouraged to reflect on past and ongoing changes in light of this,
while notes were taken and later transcribed. Such member checks constitute a crucial
technique for assessing the credibility of researcher interpretations in qualitative
research (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) and helped enrich our analysis.
Figure 1.
Timing of the
experimenting with
management control
innovations in the SNBSA
AAAJ The Director-General supported the initiative. However, similar to the group of
22,1 employees driving the implementation efforts, his endorsement was partly attributed
to a striving for external recognition and legitimization. For example, one office
manager suggested that:
The whole thing was based on SIQ’s model . . . and then it was also possible to win quality
awards and that was something [the former Director-General] liked[7].
72
The view of process orientation as predominantly influenced by external
standard-setters was corroborated in our follow-up interviews and feedback
sessions. One key informant suggested that the process orientation efforts were “not
really driven by top management but rather by consultants”.
Although the work with process orientation continued after the appointment of a
new Director-General in 1999 and was gradually extended to headquarters functions,
he grew increasingly wary of re-organising operations. In a feedback session, a key
informant recalled that:
I remember how we discussed how to divide the roles between process owners and office
managers. I think the idea was to allocate more resources and authority to the process owners
. . . but then the office managers asked “what should we do?”. This led [the Director-General],
who had inherited the work with process orientation, to pull the brake.
Hence the implementation of process-orientated control practices lost some of its
momentum. While process orientation was still seen as a tool for improving operations
its role in allocating resources and responsibilities was de-emphasised. Consequently,
several interviewees claimed that the role of the “process owners” became increasingly
diffuse. The process orientation efforts at the headquarters level also gradually ground
to a halt. In early 2002, a memo summarising an internal evaluation of the experiences
of process orientation identified the following main problems:
(1) Unclear distribution of tasks and roles between various parts of the
organisation and a feeling that process orientation was implemented in a
top-down manner without much consultation between headquarters and
regional offices.
(2) Unclear articulation of the responsibilities of the “process owners” and failure to
integrate these into management teams in charge of day-to-day, operating-level
decisions.
(3) Lack of integration of local development initiatives linked to process orientation
and failure to adopt a more holistic view of these efforts.
(4) Attitude problems among staff hindering a more customer-orientated approach
to service delivery.
While our informants confirmed many of these observations, they also suggested that
the work with process orientation assumed a very “technical” guise as a result of the
need to adapt process descriptions to fit existing information systems supporting
payment and re-payment routines. For example, in one of our feedback sessions, one
informant recalled:
One problem [with process orientation] was that there were only technicians involved. This
was reinforced by the problems of dealing with the millennium bug. It all became a matter of
technology.
Another informant confirmed this: Bundling control
Process orientation was equated with IT. There was no focus on customers and we were innovations
stuck with the IT systems that had been built up
While the introduction of process orientation was officially lauded as a means of
enhancing the level of customer orientation, the extensive process mapping being
undertaken was thus characterised as having a very “introvert” focus. Yet, some 73
interviewees indicated that customer orientation gradually became more accepted than
the work with process orientation. One reason for this, as an informant with long
experience from the SNBSA explained, was that the notion of “customers” was not really
new to the organisation but was introduced by the former Director-General already in the
1980s to emphasise the need for flexibility. While this was said to be rather controversial
at the time, he suggested that it had supported the more systematic customer orientation
efforts embedded in TQM-inspired practices. A concrete manifestation of this systematic
approach was the clearer customer segmentation initiated as part of the process
orientation efforts. For example, the organisation now refers to “customers” with special
needs (e.g. beneficiaries with significant problems of re-paying loans) and have taken
steps to provide more targeted services to these. Extensive efforts have also been made
to train staff in customer management.
There were also indications of the enhanced emphasis on customer orientation
impinging on the meaning of performance. The work on process orientation did not
involve any far-reaching attempts to devise new performance indicators to clarify the
responsibilities of the “process owners”. However, more aggregated customer
satisfaction indexes were introduced to visualise the striving towards enhanced
customer orientation. As illustrated in the following, such indicators have also formed an
integral part of the performance management systems evolving in more recent years.
75
Figure 2.
The organisation-wide
“goal card” of the SNBSA
in 2003
the private sectors, the “goal cards” also encompassed a clearly defined employee
perspective (Ax and Bjørnenak, 2005; National Financial Management Authority, 2000,
2006). However, the organisation relied on the information in its existing employee
development plans to assess achievement of the objectives established within this
perspective.
The organisation-wide “goal card” depicted in Figure 2 was also transformed into
office-specific “goal cards”, featuring a stronger emphasis on short-term targets and
performance indicators. However, these “goal cards” mainly included measures which
had long been of key concern in the organisation, such as lead times and accessibility
indicators, without much analysis of how they contributed to achievement of more
overriding objectives. Thus, one member of headquarters staff summarised the efforts
to compile performance indicators as follows:
We found a lot of measures, but it turned out to have a very operational focus. We were not
able to capture the more long-term measures.
AAAJ Other informants referred to the “goal cards” as a “sorting” or “packaging” mechanism,
22,1 arguing that little thought was given to how various performance dimensions were
interlinked. One member of headquarters staff also suggested that such attempts to
bring order to management control practices rather resulted in a lack of overview and
information overload:
My point of departure is that controlling the SNBSA is fairly simple, but there is a tendency
76 for more and more demands to be placed on the organisation. So the overall objects become
complex and this was one reason why the “goal card” became too unwieldy.
Although the general idea of balancing short- and long-term performance measures
and linking these into chains of leading and lagging indicators was emphasised in
promotional material accompanying the “goal cards”, little of this materialised in the
actual development of the system. At the outset, the idea of balance was described as a
matter of:
. . . achieving balance between the various focus areas being established and also balance
between the various levels of the organisation (excerpt from internal memo dated
September 20, 2000).
In the subsequent development of the system, however, the emphasis on the “goal
cards” for disaggregating performance measurement across various hierarchical levels
gained the upper hand, while little effort was expended on analysing or mapping
causal relationships between various focus areas. Office managers were expected to
use the “goal cards” for systematically evaluating how individual employees
contributed to meet the overall vision and objectives of the SNBSA. However, far from
all office managers seem to have made whole-hearted efforts to this end, with one
arguing that he preferred ongoing, personal contacts with subordinates and another
seeing the “goal cards” as a “bureaucratic tool” and never “fully apprehending it”. Even
where more concerted efforts were made to use the “goal cards” at the individual level
the opinion was that this did not result in tighter control.
The “goal cards” also encountered a range of additional implementation problems.
A widespread concern among headquarters staff as well as office managers was that
the latter had not been sufficiently involved in the development and implementation of
the system, which progressed in a top-down manner. Another frequently voiced
perception was that the purpose behind the “goal cards” was unclear and that
relatively little emphasis was placed on regular use of the system for performance
evaluation based on quantifiable criteria linked to operating actions. For example, one
member of headquarters staff argued that:
From my perspective [the “goal cards”] became too theoretical and something that ran
parallel to operations. The link to everyday operations was poor.
Similarly, the Chief Financial Officer explained that budgetary control evolved on a
largely “parallel” basis and was tightened to encompass more frequent feedback to
office managers but not linked to other performance evaluation practices. She went on
by saying that:
The problem within the SNBSA is that control of operations and financial control have never
been linked together.
This observation was not only attributed to the evolution of the “goal cards”, but also Bundling control
to the old culture of the organisation where “things got done” by means of informal innovations
communication and decision-making. As explicated in the following, however, the
striving for enhanced formality has been accentuated in recent years as a result of the
ensuing development of performance management.
79
Figure 3.
Simplified depiction of the
“target map” of the
SNBSA in 2006
In a follow-up interview, she reiterated this view, saying that she saw the “target map”
as “something in between TQM and the balanced scorecard” and emphasised the close
link between short-term action plans and targets as an important means of stimulating
continuous improvement. However, with the exception of the heightened emphasis on
customer orientation, informants were generally unable to elaborate on the linkages
between the “target map” and the previous, TQM-inspired work with process
orientation when queried about this topic. Yet, one of them explained that customer
orientation was:
. . . the objective with highest priority. Everything we do is linked to that.
Notably, customer-orientated performance indicators introduced as a result of the
TQM-inspired change efforts, such as customer satisfaction indexes, also occupy a
prominent position as a key target in the “target map”. Since the appointment of the new
AAAJ Director-General in 2005, concerted efforts have been made to improve customer
22,1 satisfaction, especially by focusing on key underlying performance drivers such as
telephone response times. Significant improvements were also reported in such
performance aspects in 2006. Office managers explained that an important means to this
end was more focused utilisation of staff than had previously been the case, especially
during peak seasons. In 2006, greater efforts were also initiated to measure satisfaction
80 with specific service aspects (e.g. telephone service, e-mail correspondence) more
accurately rather than mainly relying on aggregate customer satisfaction indexes.
Several informants ascribed this enhanced emphasis on more concrete,
customer-orientated performance aspects to personal, hands-on initiatives by the
new Director-General. Whereas her predecessor was generally seen as having a
penchant for formulating ambitious visions and delegating decision making, a member
of headquarters staff characterised the new Director-General as:
. . . a very practically orientated leader. Targets and controls are more grounded in practice
now.
Similarly, in a follow-up interview an office manager suggested that:
Controls have been better structured over the past year . . . Above all, there is more workshop
than talk today. It is largely an effect of [the new the Director-General] as she intervenes more
directly and makes things happen.
In our interviews, the new Director-General also placed considerable emphasis on
developing customer-orientated management practices while echoing the concerns
with the overly technical emphasis of the earlier experimenting with process
orientation. When asked to elaborate on the evolution of the notion of customer
orientation she explained that:
The difference from the earlier attempts with process orientation in the SNBSA is that it is
less of a matter of drawing process maps, which scared a lot of people, than talking about
processes and taking this as an overall approach. The focus is now on who the customer is.
Processes have to add value to the customer.
It is worth noting that the Director-General previously headed one of the leading
propagators of TQM-inspired practices among Swedish central government agencies
(the National Council for Quality and Development). However, rather than insisting on
full-scale implementation of process-orientated control practices, a more cautious and
selective approach has been adopted. A member of headquarters staff elaborated on
this as follows:
Our current process thinking is not supposed to result in any re-organisation . . . What we
have now is a half-way solution and it is more a matter of describing processes. People never
understood the meaning of processes. It has calmed down with [the new Director-General]
and it has been a process of maturation.
In our interviews, the Director-General also disassociated herself from the earlier
experimenting with process orientation in the SNBSA with reference to the wider
experiences of such practices in Swedish central government:
I have no plans to re-organise the SNBSA as they tried to do earlier but I rather try to instil
process thinking as a general approach. No-one has succeeded in creating a totally
process-orientated organisation. Everyone has abandoned it.
The unfolding development of control practices thus features some important vestiges Bundling control
of the earlier experimenting with TQM- and balanced scorecard-inspired techniques, innovations
although a rather selective approach has been taken in integrating elements of these
into the new performance management system. In contrast to these earlier change
efforts, however, our informants emphasised that the subsequent development of the
“target map” was an entirely internal project unfolding without much explicit influence
from external sources. The involvement of external consultants was minimal and the 81
“strategists” emphasised that the ambition had been to start “from scratch”. Rather
than compiling existing performance measures into the “target map”, a more
open-ended approach was adopted starting with the identification of causally related
objectives and targets and then initiating a search for suitable indicators linked to
these. One of the “strategists” emphasised the advantages of this approach, saying
that:
We didn’t have any help from consultants which was good, because from them we only got
the model [i.e. the balanced scorecard].
The initial justifications for the enhanced emphasis on strategic planning and
development of the “target map” also made much less reference to fashionable
management techniques, but largely pivoted on the need to revitalise the organisation
after a period of radical and stressful change. Promotional material used to introduce
the strategic planning activities to employees emphasised the need for a “fresh start”
and setting the organisation “on course for 2008” after having gone through “one of the
biggest changes ever” in the history of the SNBSA. Similarly, interviewees stressed the
nature of the initiative as a response to the “crisis” that the SNBSA had recently
experienced. This was especially emphasised by the office managers and was
generally appreciated as it shifted their attention from the daily grind. For example,
one of them stated that the “target map” had implied a “born again experience” for her.
Another important impetus behind the strategic planning efforts was the striving to
link internal control practices more closely to political priorities embedded in the
emerging, citizen-orientated reform agenda. A member of headquarters staff described
this as follows:
The focus on the political objectives has become clearer through our work on the strategy.
Earlier, we didn’t really know where the SNBSA was going.
Planning documents produced by the ‘strategists’ also placed considerable emphasis
on citizen orientation. The language of citizen orientation was here used largely
interchangeably with that of improved customer service. For example, the need for
improved customer service was justified as follows:
The transformation from exercising a purely administrative role to becoming a widely
appreciated, service-orientated agency that effectively meets the needs of the “new citizen”
will bring demands for change in the SNBSA. The demands imply that development of
operations and the concomitant development of services need to be increasingly
citizen-driven to meet requests for simple and constantly available, but also individualised
and qualified service (excerpt from internal planning document, August 26, 2004).
Office managers felt more involved in the work on the “target map” than the previous
efforts to implement process orientation and the “goal cards” and argued that
implementation had enhanced their understanding of the system. In particular, the new
AAAJ visualisation of the linkages between short-term action plans and various targets was
appreciated as it clarified the impact of specific efforts on the long-term strategy of the
22,1 organisation. An important reason for this enhanced understanding was that senior
management had adopted a more tightly coordinated approach, emphasising the need
for broad involvement rather than delegating work to a small group of highly
committed but isolated individuals. Whereas such an approach was adopted from the
82 outset, with the Director-General expending considerable efforts on communicating the
meaning of the “target map” to office managers and other managerial staff, his
successor has continued along this path. In an interview, she underlined this as follows:
. . . implementation depends on the degree of management commitment and then I mean the
whole management team . . . Earlier, we have had a few highly committed individuals but the
new control techniques haven’t been thoroughly anchored in different areas of operation.
At the same time, the importance of senior management “owning” the new strategy
was emphasised by several informants. Several interviewees also suggested that
implementation of the “target map” had progressed in a largely top-down manner. One
of the “strategists” found this paradoxical, arguing that:
. . . there is more centralised control today, but it is also more accepted. Earlier on, there was a
lot of internal talk about how centralised the SNBSA was, but now nobody reacts against it.
While reflecting the same, over-riding priorities the development of the “target map”
between 2006 and 2007 entailed additional simplifications such that it largely ignores
the links between various targets over the years. A controller explained the rationale
for this:
Earlier, we had a perspective of five years but now we only concentrate on one year at the
time because we don’t know very much about the future anyway.
However, our follow-up interviews in 2006 and 2007 suggest that the “target map” had
brought few novel performance indicators into use at the operating level, but that it
primarily functioned as a means of structuring strategic planning. Those in charge of
developing such indicators explained this with reference to the technical difficulties in
devising measures reflecting several key targets, such as the coherence of rules and
costs per customer. Some of the “strategists” also voiced concerns regarding the limited
efforts of office managers to communicate the meaning of the strategy and the “target
map” to lower-level employees.
6. Concluding discussion
This study constitutes a first attempt to examine in greater detail how contemporary
management control innovations are bundled in an individual organisation with
particular reference to TQM and the balanced scorecard. Our findings provide an
interesting contrast to prior research on this topic in that we find little evidence of
deliberate bundling on the supply side (Ax and Bjørnenak, 2005, 2007; Bjørnenak and
Olson, 1999). We rather illustrate how the process of bundling is part of a less linear
trajectory of change involving considerable experimenting by an adopter over an
extended period of time. While the implementation of process orientation and the “goal
cards” largely progressed as two independent projects, the enhanced emphasis on
customer orientation and use of customer satisfaction as a key performance indicator
provided a point of connection between these innovations. Such performance aspects
have also received heightened attention in the subsequent transformation of the “goal Bundling control
cards” into the “target map” while other vestiges of TQM were gradually innovations
de-emphasised. Yet, an element of “process thinking” still permeates the discourse
invoked by senior management.
In this gradual process of bundling elements of TQM and the balanced scorecard,
there is evidence of an increasingly reflective and reasoned managerial posture. While
problematic, the earlier experiences of aligning objectives, strategies, targets and 83
short-term actions, and adopting a multidimensional and holistic view of performance
through the “goal cards” were re-mobilised in the design of the “target map”. However,
this occurred as part of a more careful analysis of the political objectives and strategy
of the SNBSA and was followed by a series of simplifications to increase the clarity of
the system. Similarly, vestiges of TQM, such as customer-orientated performance
indicators, were gradually refined and made more operational while being unbundled
from other elements of TQM proving more problematic in the context of the SNBSA
(e.g. process-orientated responsibility structures and resource allocation). This partly
occurred against the backdrop of the wider, negative experiences of process-orientated
management practices in Swedish central government (Modell et al., 2007). In addition,
senior management seems to have taken stock of the experiences of the earlier,
fragmented implementation efforts by adopting a more coordinated approach aimed at
broader involvement.
These findings negate the view of managers of adopting organisations as
unreflective actors blindly enacting readily packaged solutions, which permeates much
of the literature on management fads and fashions (Clark, 2001, 2004; Giroux, 2006).
The traditional fashion perspective is clearly valid in explaining the initial adoption of
TQM- and balanced scorecard-inspired techniques, given the considerable influence
from authoritative sources outside Swedish central government (e.g. the SIQ, private
sector consultants) and the limited presence of efficient choice and forced selection
rationales (Abrahamson, 1991; Malmi, 1999). However, the unfolding development of
the “target map” reveals a more complex mix of rationales behind managerial action.
Although the initial, fashion-driven experimenting with TQM and the balanced
scorecard has shaped the experiences of key organisational actors, they subsequently
appear to have adopted a more “rational” posture in an environment where little
prescriptive advice for how to bundle such innovations is available. This position was
rather underpinned by the enhanced emphasis on goal-directed, long-range planning in
an attempt to revitalise the organisation after a stressful period of radical
re-structuring and to better align control practices with political objectives and the
Government’s emerging reform agenda. In this process, management has also
demonstrated heightened attention to the risk of novel control practices becoming
overly stereotyped (Parker and Ritson, 2005) and has made considerable
context-specific adjustments along the way.
These findings suggest two inter-related refinements to the fashion perspective in
advancing research on the bundling phenomenon. First, the notion of bundling may
need to be re-conceptualised to illuminate how it is entangled with managerial and
organisational learning processes. While fashionable innovations provide important
inputs to such processes, our findings suggest that learning entails important elements
of serendipity as well as “rationality” as organisations experiment with various
innovations. While the emerging literature on the bundling of management accounting
AAAJ and control innovations has ignored such processes (Ax and Bjørnenak, 2005, 2007;
22,1 Bjørnenak and Olson, 1999) it may be extended through integration with
organisational learning theories recognising that bundling involves some balancing
between goal-directed behaviour and less malleable experimenting (see, e.g. Crossan
et al., 1999; March, 1991). Successful adjustments of innovations to a particular
organisational context may require selective incorporation of design elements,
84 emerging as particularly useful during the process of implementation but being
mediated by repositories of organisational experience. However, to accomplish more
goal-directed change managers also need to ensure that such design elements are in
line with the overall purpose of the “new” innovation package gradually evolving.
Second, recognising that experimenting with fashionable management innovations
entails important learning aspects, we need to abandon the view of such innovations as
relatively transient phenomena characterised by limited stability and impact on
organisational practices over time (Abrahamson, 1996; Abrahamson and Fairchild,
1999; Collins, 2000; Jackson, 2001). Our findings confirm prior research suggesting that
fashion-driven adoption of management control innovations is associated with
considerable implementation problems (Modell, 2004; Northcott and France, 2005).
However, categorising the largely “failed” implementation of TQM and the balanced
scorecard in the SNBSA as organisational “rejection” of these innovations
(Abrahamson, 1991) would be an over-simplification given their lingering influence
on the “new” performance management system evolving in the organisation. Extended
analyses of organisational histories of experimenting with different management
innovations and the residues it leaves in organisations are required to fully understand
the reasons for such “unintended” consequences of change (Andon et al., 2007;
Hopwood, 1987). However, such analyses are still rare in management accounting
research informed by the fad and fashion perspectives.
While longitudinal field studies would be a preferred research strategy to
accomplish these refinements, we also believe that our observations have some
implications for the predominantly cross-sectional, survey-based literature on the
adoption of management control innovations. This literature has paid scant attention
to the complexity of implementation processes and has concentrated on individual
innovations (Modell, 2007). To capture how prior organisational experiences of
management control innovations affect the implementation of a particular technique,
survey research may be enriched by qualitative inquiries into these experiences in a
few, carefully selected organisations. A mixed methods approach would thus seem a
promising avenue for examining the adoption and implementation of management
control innovations and how this relates to the bundling phenomenon (Modell, 2005).
At a more general level, this paper also contributes to the recent debate on whether
management accounting research should concentrate on largely fashion-driven
innovations (Ittner and Larcker, 2001, 2002 vs Zimmerman, 2001). Our findings
underscore that such innovations might play an important role in the continuous
shaping of management control practices even though they may prove problematic
from the perspective of implementation. We thus concur with Ittner and Larcker (2002)
in that the role of fashionable management control innovations is certainly worthy of
serious academic research. However, more attention needs to be paid to the bundling of
such innovations than has hitherto been the case. By focusing on how organisations
make selective use of the constituent elements of innovations over time rather than
being pre-occupied with managerial fashions per se, we may be better positioned to Bundling control
capture the more fundamental role of such innovations for the purpose of management innovations
control (Weick, 2001).
Notes
1. See Abernethy et al. (2005), Bukh and Malmi (2005) and Nørreklit (2000) for critical analyses
of the nature the causal linkages embedded in the balanced scorecard.
85
2. A similar neglect of the potential conflicts between lateral and hierarchical logics of control
is discernible in Hoque’s (2003) discussion of the links between TQM and the balanced
scorecard, which mainly addresses measurement-centred issues associated with combining
these innovations. However, Chenhall (2008) observed that the balanced scorecard
incorporates few elements associated with the lateral orientation of techniques such as TQM.
3. The choice not to tape interviews was partly conditioned by the tense political climate
surrounding the SNBSA at the outset of the study. According to some informants, this
situation was exacerbated by the strained relationship between the Director-General and the
Minister of Higher Education at the time.
4. In Swedish central government parlance, “management by objectives” and “managing for
results” are typically used interchangeably. However, the latter term is more commonly
accepted and we therefore use this consistently throughout this paper.
5. The National Financial Management Authority was formed as an advisory agency in 1998
as the consultative branch of the National Audit Office was separated from state auditing.
6. 1 SEK ¼ approximately 0.11 Euro.
7. The SIQ arranges annual “contests” modelled on the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige Award in
the USA.
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Corresponding author
Sven Modell can be contacted at: Sven.Modell@mbs.ac.uk