Visualizing value creation through the management control of intangibles

Management control systems may differ markedly from organization to organization. However, the trend within many of today's organizations is to include new perspectives in their formal management control and accounting systems. This ongoing transformation of management control systems is partly driven by the notion that intangibles play an increasingly important role in an organization's value creation process and thereby has to be visualized to a greater extent than hitherto. Nowadays, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders are frequently incorporated into the value creation process of organizations. Together with the growing importance of other intangible resources, such as leadership, employee competence and internal business processes, this approach promotes a highly complex picture of the organizational value creation process. The aim of this paper is to analyze organizational value creation from a management control perspective and, based on a longitudinal case study of a Swedish bank, discuss possible key features of a management control system that enables organizations to understand and allocate attention to the value creation of the firm.

[1]  Gary W. Loveman,et al.  Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work , 1994 .

[2]  Robert A. Simons,et al.  Levers of Control: How Managers Use Innovative Control Systems to Drive Strategic Renewal , 1994 .

[3]  A. Giddens.  New rules of sociological method : a positive critique of interpretative sociologies , 1980 .

[4]  R. Kaplan,et al.  The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action , 1996 .

[5]  Ulf Johanson,et al.  Att mäta och styra verksamheten: modeller med fokus på icke-materiella resurser , 2001 .

[6]  Juhani Vaivio,et al.  Exploring a `non-financial' management accounting change , 1999 .

[7]  R. Yin.  Case Study Research: Design and Methods , 1984 .

[8]  Robert W. Scapens,et al.  Conceptualizing management accounting change: an institutional framework☆ , 2000 .

[9]  D. Larcker,et al.  Are nonfinancial measures leading indicators of financial performance? An analysis of customer satisfaction , 1998 .

[10]  J. Low,et al.  Invisible advantage : how intangible are driving business performance , 2002 .

[11]  Karl-Erik Sveiby.  The New Organizational Wealth: Managing and Measuring Knowledge-Based Assets , 1997 .

[12]  R. Ramírez.  Value co-production: intellectual origins and implications for practice and research , 1999 .

[13]  Hanne Nørreklit.  The Balance on the Balanced Scorecard: A Critical Analysis of Some of Its Assumptions , 2000 .

[14]  A. Giddens,et al.  New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies. , 1977 .

[15]  Ulf Johanson,et al.  Mobilizing change through the management control of intangibles , 2001 .

[16]  Ulf Johanson.  WHY THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN RESOURCE COSTING AND ACCOUNTING DOES NOT WORK: A LESSON FROM SEVEN SWEDISH CASES. , 1999 .

[17]  A. Giddens.  Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis , 1979 .

[18]  Nils-Göran Olve,et al.  Performance Drivers: A Practical Guide to Using the Balanced Scorecard , 1999 .

[19]  G. Gilbert,et al.  Researching Social Life , 1994 .

[20]  R. Kaplan,et al.  The balanced scorecard--measures that drive performance. , 2015, Harvard business review.

[21]  Robert A. Simons.  The role of management control systems in creating competitive advantage: New perspectives☆ , 1990 .

[22]  A. Giddens.  The Constitution of Society , 1985 .

[23]  Thomas H. Johnson,et al.  Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting , 1987 .

[24]  Ulf Johanson,et al.  Measuring to understand intangible performance drivers , 2001 .

[25]  Carol J. McNair,et al.  Cost management and value creation: the missing link , 2001 .

[26]  Jan Mouritsen,et al.  A space for time: accounting and Time Based Management in a high technology company☆ , 1999 .

[27]  Denise M. English,et al.  Levers of Control , 1996 .

[28]  Manuel García-Ayuso Covarsí,et al.  THE VALUE RELEVANCE AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS OF INTANGIBLES: A LITERATURE REVIEW 1 , 1999 .

[29]  B. Lev.  Intangibles: Management, Measurement, and Reporting , 2001 .

[30]  A. Giddens.  Central Problems In Social Theory , 1979 .

[31]  R. Kaplan,et al.  The strategy-focused organization , 2000 .