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Value-based management and the balanced scorecard are two of the most distinguished management concepts of the past decades. The main criticism levelled at value-based management is that it is rarely applied in business practice. By contrast, the balanced scorecard is mainly criticized for its insufficient integration into corporate strategy. The two concepts are occasionally described as competing business philosophies in management theory. This chapter offers an integrative view of value-based management and the balanced scorecard. The resulting ‘value-based scorecard’ incorporates the value-based business philosophy while creating a link between the scorecard and the ‘value–added’ corporate strategy. This minimizes a multitude of other critical aspects of both concepts. In light of this, it is recommended that both management theory and business practice further interpret or use the value-based scorecard presented in this study as a tool for value-based management.

This volume of Advances in Management Accounting (AIMA) begins with a paper by Neumann, Cauvin, and Roberts on the issue of information overload and multiple constituency values. Stakeholder advocates call for including more environmental and social disclosures but do not consider how these additional disclosures might lead to information overload and impair the use and interpretation of corporate performance measures. As we know, shareholders and boards of directors are most concerned with market data such as earnings per share, dividend rates, and market value growth. The authors suggest here that management control system (MCS) designers must consider information overload, primacy, and information markers before expanding the MCS to include social and nonfinancial disclosures. Management accountants are accustomed to providing performance measures within an organization and MCS usually have an internal focus. CFOs are often not accustomed to balance the needs of stakeholders with those of managers and owners. Companies and CFOs will face an information overload dilemma in making these determinations, and the users will be overloaded in sifting through the multiple dimensions of information that are increasingly being provided. The bias toward financial performance measures will distort both the provision and use of sustainability performance measures.

The purpose of this paper is to define a framework and categorization of the types of evidence required to prove the value and impact of libraries. It questions the limitations of current measurement for library value, and hence for contributing to academic and research library planning and advocacy. The paper describes and draws on some of the recent progress in value and impact measurement over the last five years. Scenario planning exercises conducted by both ARL and SCONUL are used to analyse the likely future value proposition emerging for libraries. A values‐based value scorecard is proposed, which would demonstrate the transcendent value of academic and research libraries now and in the future.

The paper examines research literature from library and general management texts to propose a framework for measuring the value and impact of libraries.

The paper concludes that a value scorecard can be used alongside the balanced scorecard to add a more value‐oriented picture of library strengths and contribution. The potential benefit of the proposed value scorecard is to gather evidence which will assist both strategic planning and decision making in relation to key areas for future investment.

The proposal defines a new framework aimed at measuring the full value of academic research libraries, considering both tangible and intangible assets. The proposal has been developed by exploring measurement gaps in the library management field and exploring potential options from this area and general management literature. If applied successfully, the model should provide a useful tool for strategic management and decision making.

This volume of Advances in Management Accounting (AIMA) begins with a paper by Ashton on various models of value creation that have been proposed for supporting value-based management. Balanced Scorecard, the Baldridge Quality Award Criteria, the Service-Profit Chain, and the Skandia Intellectual Capital Model are among them. Similarities and differences among value-creation models are noted, their potential for guiding the identification of value drivers and performance measures for value-based management is assessed, and critical management issues that must be addressed if such models are to contribute to long-run value creation are explored. The substantial body of research evidence linking intangible value drivers to financial outcomes is reviewed, and some directions for further research are offered. This will become a valuable source for management accounting researchers, including doctoral students, in their research in this area.

Stephen Town has been a thought leader and change agent in the academic library world for more than 20 years, who has produced a very large body of work in the areas of quality management and performance measurement that has been disseminated internationally. Town’s retirement from full-time employment at the University of York provides a timely opportunity to review his contribution to the field. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this issue.

The review outlines Town’s career path and professional interests and then appraises his published output, concentrating on his contributions to thinking and practice in the areas of benchmarking, information literacy, service quality, and measuring the value and impact of academic libraries and information services. The discussion is organized thematically to illustrate the evolution and development of his interests and ideas over the review period and also references-related work by other authors to set his work in context.

The study found many examples of innovative and creative work that had influenced thinking and practice in the library profession, including the development of models, frameworks, and tools with the potential to improve the effectiveness of service benchmarking, information literacy education, library advocacy, relationship management, staff evaluation, and impact measurement.

The volume of published work necessitated some selectivity in the material covered, but the review provides sufficiently comprehensive coverage of the areas specified to represent the work effectively.

Town has produced a substantial number of publications as a practitioner-researcher that have not previously been reviewed independently as a coherent body of work.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of research and development in the measurement of maintenance performance. It considers the problems of various measuring parameters and comments on the lack of structure in and references for the measurement of maintenance performance. The main focus is to determine how value can be created for organizations by measuring maintenance performance, examining such maintenance strategies as condition‐based maintenance, reliability‐centred maintenance, e‐maintenance, etc. In other words, the objectives are to find frameworks or models that can be used to evaluate different maintenance strategies and determine the value of these frameworks for an organization.

A state‐of‐the‐art literature review has been carried out to answer the following two research questions. First, what approaches and techniques are used for maintenance performance measurement (MPM) and which MPM techniques are optimal for evaluating maintenance strategies? Second, in general, how can MPM create value for organizations and, more specifically, which system of measurement is best for which maintenance strategy?

The body of knowledge on maintenance performance is both quantitatively and qualitatively based. Quantitative approaches include economic and technical ratios, value‐based and balanced scorecards, system audits, composite formulations, and statistical and partial maintenance productivity indices. Qualitative approaches include human factors, amongst other aspects. Qualitatively based approaches are adopted because of the inherent limitations of effectively measuring a complex function such as maintenance through quantitative models. Maintenance decision makers often come to the best conclusion using heuristics, backed up by qualitative assessment, supported by quantitative measures. Both maintenance performance perspectives are included in this overview.

A comprehensive review of maintenance performance metrics is offered, aiming to give, in a condensed form, an extensive introduction to MPM and a presentation of the state of the art in this field.

Organisations cannot effectively implement advanced workplace strategies and investment projects without clearly communicated vision, prioritised objectives and appropriate performance metrics. With any business strategy and investment project, the objectives and metrics selected will combine both quantitative and qualitative elements and aim to achieve both internal and external impact. This multidimensionality of objectives indicates the use of a balanced scorecard system of measurement. This paper argues that a coherent evaluation and feedback system should be an integral part of any workplace change programme, and that time and expenditure should be budgeted for learning from prototyping or piloting, review, adaptation and communication of feedback. Without such a learning loop, real estate professionals will fail to convince business leaders of how changes in corporate workplaces contribute to business success.

“What you measure is what you get” is a favorite aphorism of many a management writer. As most practicing managers know, measures drive management behavior, especially if they are reinforced by reward systems. But few organizations have understood the importance of this connection and dealt with these issues in a holistic way. It means building new performance management systems in parallel with new management structures and redefining responsibility boundaries. This is not an easy message for a measurement industry that believes it has the complete solution. The article “The power of world‐class performance management: use it!” deals with the key measurement issues, tackles the organization problems concerned with aligning strategy and behaviors, and describes the way organizations can obtain a world‐class performance management process. The ideas described in the article are based on a benchmark study recently performed by the author at prominent, global companies, and during projects he performed, in the area of performance management, at various clients.

Since its introduction in 1992, the balanced scorecard (BSC) has rapidly gained in importance throughout the world. Harvard Business Review even selected it as one of the most important management tools of the past 75 years. This paper takes the performance indicators used in an offshore health‐and‐safety benchmarking study carried out by Aberdeen University on 13 offshore installations operating on the UK Continental Shelf and relates them to the BSC framework. The results from the benchmarking study are discussed from the perspective of suggesting which indicators should populate each perspective of the BSC: financial, customer, internal business and learning and growth. In addition the paper includes the results of interviews conducted with senior managers in the UK and Norwegian oil and gas sector, about use of the BSC in general and with regard to health and safety performance indicators in particular. Reasons for including occupational health and safety in the BSC and reports/papers covering occupational health and safety indicators and the BSC are discussed.

This paper aims to examine the potential of strong structuration theory in management accounting research.

The paper explains how the ontological perspective of strong structuration theory extends the work of Giddens and explores how the perspective overcomes a number of the limitations of existing management accounting research based on structuration theory.

Strong structuration theory develops and extends the work of Giddens, providing greater insights into the role of agents, improves our understanding of the diffusion of accounting practices through organisational fields, adds to our knowledge of how artefacts are used in the production and reproduction of organisational life and improves research design.

Strong structuration theory provides clear guidance about management accounting case study research design, and suggests the potential for the accounting research community to engage more actively in debates about the development of structuration theory beyond the work of Giddens.

This paper provides a clear explanation of the ontology of strong structuration theory, its implications for research design and how it holds the potential to overcome many of the limitations of earlier management accounting studies deploying structuration theory.