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The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to disclose, report, and manage intellectual capital (IC) in a network of companies. To this end, it provides a monetary evaluation of core competencies (CCs), which may be defined as a bundle of various types of intangibles, aggregating their value into a network statement, called a network competence report (NCR).

The paper utilises the interventionist approach. The intervention was conducted by the authors and studied through joint reflections on documentation from meetings and individual, semi-structured interviews.

The NCR makes IC more transparent, thereby allowing companies and network managers to assess the strengths and weaknesses of CCs with a consequent potential insight into their potential earnings.

This method is labour-intensive, especially in its first application, and the data collection requires considerable company involvement. The interventionist approach may have influenced the empirical results, which may be affected by subjectivity. As the paper involves a single network, care should be taken in generalising its empirical evidence.

In making IC management more effective, the NCR is valuable for academics, management, political authorities and, more generally, for a network’s stakeholders. The NCR is a tool for internal and external communication purposes, creating the conditions to mobilise IC. The proposed model supports the diagnosis of networks by providing CC maps and assessments relevant to their governance and competitiveness. The NCR depicts company and network CCs, allowing intertemporal comparisons that facilitate understanding of the effectiveness of the network’s actions and the importance of belonging to it.

This paper represents a first attempt to evaluate, in monetary terms, CCs in a network. Its value lies in its practical implications. Moreover, the paper investigates IC in applied terms, contributing to reducing the gap between theory and practice.

This chapter focuses on how changes in management control systems in a manufacturing company could be affected by the interplay of institutional forces and power mobilization over an extended period of time (1946–1975).

The chapter is grounded in the ‘hybrid’ theoretical framework developed by Yazdifar, Zaman, Tsamenyi, and Askarany (2008) which ties old institutional economics, new institutional sociology and power mobilization frameworks to provide a holistic view of a process of change. Historical analysis contributes to an understanding of the institutional context. The research has been developed by a longitudinal case study by using archival data.

The chapter provides us with an insight into management accounting change during an extended period of time dominated by political instability, economic turbulence, social tensions and change in the company’s presidency. The study suggests that changes were dependent on a complex set of relationships and preconditions, that the specificity of the company’s accounting controls was tied to isomorphism forms and power relationships internal to the company, while pressures from the external environment did not impact significantly on control systems architecture and functioning of the company.

The use of qualitative approach (as longitudinal case studies) is often criticized because its results are not generalizable and replicable.

The chapter clarifies the theoretical underpinnings of the institutional frameworks and power relationships and suggests areas for institutional and interdisciplinary research into management change.

The research aims at addressing the way in which linkages based on qualitative causality could be preferred in designing a balanced scorecard (BSC), by applying a cost-benefit judgment with respect to the complexity of defining strong, statistically reliable cause-and-effect relations among performance measures.

The authors review the way in which cause-and-effect relations across the BSC have been developed based on a case study of BSC implemented in an Italian bank collecting data by in-depth interviews and company’s internal archives.

The research reveals how the ambiguity, or “blurred nature”, of strategic linkages is recognized in the empirical setting of an bank, facing a highly uncertain and complex environment and how the orthodox tools of strategy maps and explicit cause-and-effect linkages prescribed by the theoretical literature are avoided by the human actors. Despite these omissions, the BSC is nevertheless effective. As the case shows, it generated a “democracy” where individuals and departments communicate, commit and collaborate in an effort to implement strategy. The research also shows the role of the BSC in heightening the importance and awareness of performance evaluation among the actors.

The research provides practitioners with insights into how to design and manage cause-and-effect relationships in BSC. In particular, evidence is provided that finality linkages in BSC may be successful in use and predictive capabilities, according with expectations and purposes of the organization’s “climate of control”, in a context in which the cost-benefit philosophy in implementing BSC is followed.

The paper addresses an issue of practical relevance in the implementation of BSC showing a discrepancy between theoretical and practical meaning of causality. Besides the research highlights, the extent to which linkages across the BSC perspectives (and related measures and variables) can only be based on individual assumptions about the means to an end and based on qualitative assertions (finality).