Making up performance: the construction of “performance” in venture capital firms portfolios

Abstract

Performance measurement is understood as a corner stone of organizations’ accounting and control function (Chenhall,2003; Merchant & Van der Stede, 2012). In the wake of the relevance lost debate accounting systems have beencriticized for being obsessed with historical financial accounting information making accounting data inadequate fordecision making and insufficiently useful for creating a future alertness in organizations (Johnson & Kaplan, 1987). Inthe aftermath of this, more strategically-oriented accounting systems fostering on the non-financial dimension ofperformance, as most prominently presented by the balanced scorecard, gained increasingly attention by organizationsand accounting scholars (Ax & Bjørnenak, 2005; Nørreklit, 2000, 2003). Yet, there is a substantial body of researchstudying the adoption of MAIs (Management Accounting Innovations) addressing questions of how MAIs such as theBalanced Scorecard travel and change in the course of diffusion and organizational implementation (e.g. Ax &Bjørnenak, 2005; Jones & Dugdale, 2002; Qu & Cooper, 2011). What the literature does not reveal in depth is how dointegrated systems for performance measurement and control comprising financial and non-financial KPIs supportorganizations in handling uncertainty and complexity (Chenhall & Moers, 2015). In this paper, we aim for exploringperformance measurement and control and thus contributing to existing literature by studying how venture capital firmsmobilize ideas of performance measurement and control to handle uncertainty and complexity in their investmentportfolio. More specifically, we investigate two firms of the venture capital industry that use financial and non-financialindicators to manage their portfolio and make decisions. Consequently, this paper addresses the following researchquestions: How do venture capital firms use performance measurement to manage their investment portfolios? And howis “performance” constructed in this context?Exploring how firms from a quite volatile industry use performance measurement is regarded to be interestingfrom various perspectives: First of all, we know little about the link between uncertainty and performance measurement.Second from a theoretical perspective of ActorReality Construction (ARC) there is little empirical evidence on howorganizations construct facts or the factual dimension of accounting and management – facts in the context of ourempirical setting, the venture capital industry, are measures used in the performance measurement system (PMS).Particularly, venture capital firms having a big stake in early phase seed investments, are uncertain in the sense thatattaching a score or a number to a performance dimension of a portfolio company is maybe not that stable over time andambiguous. However, doing the exercise of reviewing each portfolio company according to a dashboard-like PMS givesthe KPIs, despite of their uncertain nature, a factual character. The PMS numbers allow managers to discuss andevaluate “performance” of the portfolio companies in management meetings as well as to make decisions, on forexample, investing additional money, based on the performance facts of the portfolio company. Interestingly, thecombination of “hard” and “soft” numbers – thus, financial and non-financial indicators, plays a pivotal role for VCcompanies in order to be capable to assess “the performance” of the portfolio companies. In other words, it enablesventure capital firms to better take into account the particular organizational contexts of portfolio companies.