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This study seeks to develop an Environmental Sustainability Balanced Scorecard (ESBSC) articulated through a strategic map for collaborative implementation by municipalities by municipalities. In addition, it aims to elucidate the architecture of this tool.

The research uses qualitative methodology, initiating with document analysis, followed by municipal-level surveys and an interview with the Norte Portugal Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N).

The study constructs an ESBSC that adopts an integrative approach to sustainability, focusing on municipal joint action. The tool fosters synergies and enhances cooperation. By incorporating a strategic mix, the tool contributes to improving the environmental management performance of the participating municipalities.

This study introduces a tool designed for municipalities that aspire to incorporate environmental sustainability into their strategies. This tool facilitates the implementation and management of a long-term environmental strategy, with potential implications for organization and its culture. In addition, it highlights critical environmental factors that should serve as a starting point in future studies or applications of this tool.

Involving both an academic institution and multiple municipalities, this research identifies critical environmental factors that enhance environmental awareness within municipalities and designs a tool that, when consciously adopted, can influence the culture dynamics of the population involved. Furthermore, it proposes a structured and systematic research method for creating an ESBSC for joint municipal action.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this research constitutes the first exploratory attempt to devise an environmental strategy for joint municipal action. Although the tool emphasizes the environmental component, it promotes an integrated vision of sustainability. Despite the extensive application of balanced scorecards in various organizational contexts, their utilization in fostering environmental sustainability at a municipal level remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by developing a tailored strategic tool that operationalizes environmental priorities within municipal governance frameworks.

Since the introduction of balanced scorecard by Kaplan and Norton in 1992, it garnered considerable research and practice attention across disciplines. Using bibliometric analysis, this study examines trends in balanced scorecard research in last 20 years and identifies future areas of research.

The Web of Science database was used to extract research papers from the 2003 to 2023 period with “Balanced Scorecard” as topic. The final sample consisted of 445 articles. Trends and patterns were analyzed using bibliometric analysis through research profiling and thematic analysis.

The findings reveal that BSC, spanning across disciplines, including business and operations, has enriched the theory and practice of BSC research. Analytical and survey methods were more prevalent than primary studies. Scholars from the USA and the UK have made noteworthy contributions to balanced scorecard research. Emerging themes include integrating human resources, sustainability, subjectivity in performance evaluation and non-financial performance indicators in BSC for better strategic decision-making.

The study would inspire researchers to generate new research questions and hypotheses and help in identifying gaps in the current knowledge base and areas where further investigation is needed. Managers would gain useful insights into performance management by studying the BSC research evolution to find a fit for modern-day industry needs.

The authors’ contribution fills the void by providing useful account of extent research over last 20 years using bibliometric analysis and motivate future research directions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the technical, social and moral aspects of accounting through the implementation of a novel balanced scorecard (BSC) that addresses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation – within the Portuguese water utilities sector.

A novel research design is adopted, using actor network theory (ANT) as a broad approach to frame the study. ANT emphasizes the importance of ever-evolving networks of relationships and how concepts such as the BSC are just as important in structuring social practice. A set of expert interviews was conducted with stakeholders in the water utilities sector in Portugal, which led to the iterative development of a context-relevant BSC proposal and associated indicators.

A novel BSC architecture to achieve UN SDG 6 is proposed through a unique engagement between professionals and academics. The BSC, and the specific definition of indicators for an entire sector (water), contribute to bridging business processes with the common good to improve life and planetary conditions. Ultimately, the study discusses how the technical aspects of accounting can be enhanced to achieve social and moral imperatives. The paper also reflects on the limitations of broadening existing technical practices.

There is a burgeoning literature on how organizations are engaging with the UN SDG agenda. However, there is a dearth of studies on how management control systems are currently addressing, or can potentially contribute to measuring and managing specific UN SDGs such as Clean Water and Sanitation. This study makes a unique contribution to the literature by developing a novel BSC solution to SDG 6 measurement and management using a novel practitioner-led approach. Ultimately, our study highlights how accounting can be broadened to enhance technical practices while also serving a moral and social purpose.

Measuring shared value (SV) created in innovation ecosystems (IEs) is increasingly relevant but complex, given the multidimensional and multiactor nature of both concepts, which challenges traditional performance measurement systems (PMSs). Moving from this gap, the authors propose an integrated approach to extend the balanced scorecard (BSC) for measuring and monitoring SV creation at IE level.

The proposed approach combines the most recent contributions on PMS in IEs and SV to define perspectives and dimensions that are better suited to deal with the nature of both IEs and SV. The approach is also applied to the real case (Alpha) of an Italian IE through a step wise method. Starting from the IE vision, the authors identify in the strategy map the specific objectives related to each perspective/dimension combination and then associate a performance indicator with each objective.

The resulting SV BSC is composed of indicators interconnected along different perspectives and dimensions. The application of the approach to the real case proves its feasibility and highlights characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of the SV BSC when used at IE level. The authors also provide guidelines for its application to other IEs.

The study contributes to the research on PMS by introducing and applying to a real case an integrated approach to assess SV in IEs, overcoming the shortcomings of PMS framed for single firms. It can be of interest for both researchers in the field of ecosystems value creation and practitioners managing or promoting such complex structures.

During the 1990s, Italian healthcare organisations (HOs) underwent a process of corporatisation, and the most innovative HOs introduced the balanced scorecard (BSC) to address the need for broader accountability. Currently, there is a limited understanding of the dynamics and outcomes of such a process. Therefore, this study aims to explore whether the BSC is still considered an effective performance management tool and analyse the factors driving and hindering its evolution and endurance in public and non-profit HOs.

We conducted a retrospective longitudinal analysis of two pioneering cases in the adoption of the BSC: one in a public hospital and the other in a non-profit hospital. Data collection relied on accessing institutional documents and reports from the early 2000s to the present, as well as conducting semi-structured interviews with the internal sponsors of the BSC.

We found evidence of three main categories of factors that trigger or hinder the adoption and development of the BSC: (1) the role of the internal sponsor and professionals’ commitment; (2) information technology and the controller’s technological skills; and (3) the relationship between the management and professionalism logics during the implementation process. At the same time, there is no evidence to suggest that specific technical features of the BSC influence its endurance.

The paper contributes to the debate on the key factors for implementing and sustaining multidimensional control systems in professional organisations. It emphasises the importance of knowledge-based assets and distinctive internal capabilities for the success of the business. The implications of the BSC legacy are discussed, along with future developments of multidimensional control tools aimed at supporting strategy execution.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the South African government has used accounting technologies to manage the pervasive issue of racial inequality.

Premised on Foucault’s notion of governmentality, we conducted a qualitative case study. Publicly available archival data are used to determine the extent to which accounting techniques have helped to shape policy responses to racial inequality.

We show that accounting techniques and calculations give visibility to the problems of government and help design a programme to solve racial inequality. The lived experiences and impacts of racism in the workplace have been problematised, turned into statistics, and used to rationalise the need for ongoing government intervention in solving the problem. These processes underpin the development of the scorecard system, which measures the contributions firms have made towards minimising racial inequalities.

This study augments the existing body of Foucauldian literature by illustrating how power dynamics can be counteracted. We show that in governmental processes, accounting can exhibit a dual role, and these roles are not always subordinate to the analysis of political realities. The case of B-BBEE reveals the unintended consequences of utilising accounting to control the conduct of individuals or groups.

The process of performance measurement provides support to company management to achieve the objectives established in strategic planning. Through the definition of critical success factors and related key performance indicators, performance measurement verifies the gap between planned objectives and the results achieved, informing the responsible bodies to enable them to evaluate performance and, if necessary, implement improvement actions. Although many types of companies adopt performance measurement, this process is challenging when applied to national health services. This paper aims to identify the evolution of performance measurement and the critical success factors of national health services.

The authors conducted an explorative case study of a leading national health service to delineate the evolutionary path of performance measurement and the main critical success factors.

The results indicate a significant increase in the maturity of performance measurement of a national health service that has been motivated by international reforms and national regulations. This research highlights performance measurement features such as a balanced set of metrics, targets, and incentives linked to strategic objectives and regular and frequent performance reviews. Furthermore, it identifies the performance measurement model of a leading national health service.

The evolution of performance measurement and numerous critical success factors of national health services are described; the critical success factors cover a wide range of financial to operational aspects such as patient safety, organizational appropriateness, and clinical appropriateness.

This paper illuminates our journey as accounting educators by exploring accounting as a technical, social and moral practice towards decolonising ourselves. It lays the foundations for decolonising the higher education curriculum and the consequences for addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This paper focuses on the potential to foster a space for praxis by adopting dialogism-in-action to understand our transformative learning through Jindaola [pronounced Jinda-o-la], a university-based Aboriginal knowledge program. A dialogic pedagogy provided the opportunity to create a meaningful space between us as academics, the Aboriginal Knowledge holder and mentor, the other groups in Jindaola and, ultimately, our accounting students. Since Jindaola privileged ‘our way’ as the pedagogical learning process, we adopt autoethnography to share and reflect on our experiences. Making creative artefacts formed the basis for building relationships, reciprocity and respect and represents our shared journey and collective account.

We reveal our journey of “holding to account” by analysing five aspects of our lives as critical accounting academics – the overarching conceptual framework, teaching, research, governance and our physical landscape. In doing so, we found that Aboriginal perspectives provide a radical positioning to the colonial legacies of accounting practice.

Our journey through Jindaola contemplates how connecting with Country and engaging with Aboriginal ways of knowing can assist educators in meaningfully addressing the SDGs. While not providing a panacea or prescription for what to do, we use ‘our way’ as a story of our commitment to transformative change.

This paper aims to investigate how the technical logics of a World Bank-led performance management reform interacted with the social, political and historical logics within a developing country (DC) regulatory organisation. The institutional environment both within and outside the organisation was considered to understand the performance management reform experience.

An interview-based, longitudinal, qualitative case study approach was used to locate accounting in its technical, social and political space. A large regulatory organisation in Bangladesh was investigated as a case study to reveal how traditional organisational practices and public sector norms mediated a performance management reform. Informed by the institutional logics (IL) and economies of worth perspectives, interviews were used to locate IL at macro-level and associated organisational actors’ strategic responses that ultimately shaped the implementation of a performance management system (PMS).

This paper reveals how accounting, as a social and political practice, influences accountability reform within a regulatory organisation. It provides an account of both the processes and resultant practices of an accounting reform initiative. While a consultative and transparent performance management process was intended to enhance accountability, it challenged the traditional organisational authority structure and culture. The new PMS retained, modified and adjusted a number of its characteristics over time. These adjustments reflected an amalgamation of the influence of institutional pressures from powerful constituents and the ability of the local agents (managers) in negotiating and mediating the institutionalisation of a new PMS.

The findings of this paper carry major implications for policy makers, particularly with respect to the design of future reform programs on PMS.

This paper offers a theoretical mapping of IL and its organisation-level interpretations and practices. Thus, the authors locate power and influence at field and firm levels. The findings of this study reflect historical, political and cultural backgrounds of the case study organisation and how these contextual forces were active in shaping the meaning of reform logics. Though the institutional environment and agents were unique to the case study organisation, this research offers a “process generalisation” that reveals how a best practice PMS was translated and transformed by the traditional organisational practices in a DC regulatory context.

Process mining (PM) has emerged as a leading technology for gaining data-based insights into organizations’ business processes. As processes increasingly cross-organizational boundaries, firms need to conduct PM jointly with multiple organizations to optimize their operations. However, current knowledge on cross-organizational process mining (coPM) is widely dispersed. Therefore, we synthesize current knowledge on coPM, identify challenges and enablers of coPM, and build a socio-technical framework and agenda for future research.

We conducted a literature review of 66 articles and summarized the findings according to the framework for Information Technology (IT)-enabled inter-organizational coordination (IOC) and the refined PM framework. The former states that within inter-organizational relationships, uncertainty sources determine information processing needs and coordination mechanisms determine information processing capabilities, while the fit between needs and capabilities determines the relationships’ performance. The latter distinguishes three categories of PM activities: cartography, auditing and navigation.

Past literature focused on coPM techniques, for example, algorithms for ensuring privacy and PM for cartography. Future research should focus on socio-technical aspects and follow four steps: First, determine uncertainty sources within coPM. Second, design, develop and evaluate coordination mechanisms. Third, investigate how the mechanisms assist with handling uncertainty. Fourth, analyze the impact on coPM performance. In addition, we present 18 challenges (e.g. integrating distributed data) and 9 enablers (e.g. aligning different strategies) for coPM application.

This is the first article to systematically investigate the status quo of coPM research and lay out a socio-technical research agenda building upon the well-established framework for IT-enabled IOC.