Toward performance measurement systems based on business models

Abstract

Emerging research in the field of Management Control calls for abandoning out-dated performance measurement systems (PMSs) to emphasize the value chain of companies' value creation. Business model (BM) concepts can help to highlight this causal chain and convince companies to reframe their PMSs. However, little is known about how BM information is entered and used in companies' accounting information systems (AISs). In this study, we investigate whether companies im-prove their AISs by institutionalizing BM information, and we look at ways in which they can combine this information into their PMSs. We statistically test the coercive, mimetic, and normative forces influencing the institutionalization of BM information and the changes in AISs using the content analysis of the corporate reports and websites of 86 listed firms. Our results show that firms adjusted their AISs to communicate BM information, resulting in AISs conducive to the re-placement of traditional PMSs with new BM-based frameworks. Despite this change, we offer some reflections on whether and how these changes may happen in practice, and on ways in which combining BM information can give rise to new cognitive and accounting frameworks to reshape PMSs. This study enriches the theoretical research on the determinants shaping the institutionalization of new corporate information. It highlights the cognitive effects resulting from designing PMSs by advocating the need to consider cognitive and psychological aspects when capturing and portraying value creation in synoptic tools.