A multi-method approach to building causal performance maps from expert knowledge

Abernethy, Margaret A.; Horne, Malcolm; Lillis, Anne M.; Malina, Mary A.; Selto, Frank H.

doi:10.1016/j.mar.2005.03.003

Cited by 106 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Techniques such as the balanced scorecard (Kaplan & Norton, 1996), causal performance maps (Abernethy, Horne, Lillis, Malina & Selto, 2005), performance pyramids (Lynch & Cross, 1992), and activity-based costing (Kaplan & Cooper, 1998) provide more elaborate, detailed and comprehensive data. These systems attempt to make accounting information a more complete and more relevant description of underlying organizational activities.…”

Section: The Role Of Accounting Information In Developing Knowledge Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting information and managerial work

Hall

2010

Accounting, Organizations and Society

242

269

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Despite calls to link management accounting more closely to management (Jonsson, 1998), much is still to be learned about the role of accounting information in managerial work. This lack of progress stems partly from a failure to incorporate in research efforts the findings regarding the nature of managerial work, as well as inadequate attention devoted to the detailed practices through which accounting information is actually used by managers in their work. In this paper I draw on prior research to develop a series of propositions focused on three primary insights into how and why managers use accounting information in their work. First, managers primarily use accounting information to develop knowledge of their work environment rather than as an input into specific decision making scenarios. In this role, accounting information can help managers to develop knowledge to prepare for unknown future decisions and activities. Second, as accounting information is just one part of the wider information set that managers use to perform their work, it is imperative to consider its strengths and weaknesses not in isolation but relative to other sources of information at a manager's disposal. Third, as managers interact with information and other managers utilising primarily verbal forms of communication, it is through talk rather than through written reports that accounting information becomes implicated in managerial work. These insights have important implications for how managers use accounting information, and, in particular, require reconsideration of the types accounting information that managers find, or could find, helpful. The paper also considers how existing experimental and field-based methods could fruitfully be adapted to focus on the detailed activities through which managers engage with accounting information.

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Section: The Role Of Accounting Information In Developing Knowledge Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting information and managerial work

Hall

2010

Accounting, Organizations and Society

242

269

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The specific SFs of a company are integrated into a cause-and-effect network. Each factor can directly or indirectly be linked with the company's financial performance [8][9][10]. A cause-and-effect relationship will only be defined as causal, if a strong correlation between cause(s) and effect(s) exists and the cause of action temporally precedes the effect.…”

Section: Performance Management and Performance Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The direction of an arrow implies the assumed causality. Thus, a causal map can be interpreted as a cognitive map, which describes the process of performances in a company [8]. But, a cognitive map is always constructed from a single individual, whereas a causal map can also represent the cause-and-effect relationships as an aggregated result of several individuals [35].…”

Section: Types Of Mapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But, in the related literature, approaches are most favoured that aim for a specific form of an aggregation of individual maps. The aggregation can follow specific 'counting rules' of factors and relations depicted as arrows [8,34]. Moreover, the finalisation of an aggregated group map is widely spread via group discussions and workshops [31,38].…”

Section: Development and Participation In Causal Mapping Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Afterwards, the mapping process can be conducted by an interviewed expert itself, by the support of qualitative software, solely by an external researcher, a consultant or a team -so-called ethnographical protocol interpretation-or by the interaction of external persons and company experts [8,20,44]. The most relevant and applied mapping techniques that can be distinguished from each other and contain essential attributes are the ethnographical protocol interpretation and the interactive mapping.…”

Section: Development and Participation In Causal Mapping Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Performance Management by Causal Mapping: An Application Field of Knowledge Management

Kölbel¹,

Ossadnik²,

Gergeleit³

2017

Knowledge Management Strategies and Applications

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As implied by the performance management (PM) concept, modern corporate management has to focus on cause-and-effect relationships underlying a firm´s financial performance generation. To determine the causes of financially desirable effects, subject-bound experiences and knowledge of employees, called tacit knowledge, should be realised. For this, knowledge management (KM) offers various elicitation techniques to reveal corporate-specific success factors (SFs) of financial performance generation from the corporate experts´implicit knowledge. The identified factors have to be organised within a network of cause-and-effect relationships. In this framework, PM can apply the instrument of mapping to structure the individually revealed knowledge, to aggregate and visualise it for the entire company. For a valid representation of the causal relationships, the subjective bias arising within the mentioned process has to be minimised. In the literature, a variety of mapping methods can be found that differ in their approaches and their level of significance. As such a method, causal mapping will be presented in this paper. For providing intersubjectivity, the decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) as a multi-criteria approach will be debated in the context of mapping as a research field.

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2018

Building Performance Analysis

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A multi-method approach to building causal performance maps from expert knowledge

Cited by 106 publications

References 36 publications

Accounting information and managerial work

Accounting information and managerial work

Performance Management by Causal Mapping: An Application Field of Knowledge Management

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