This field study examines the workings of multiple performance measurement systems (PMSs) used within and between a division and Headquarters (HQ) of a large European corporation. We explore how multiple PMSs arose within the multinational corporation. We first provide a first‐order analysis which explains how managers make sense of the multiplicity and show how an organization's PMSs may be subject to competing processes for control that result in varied systems, all seemingly functioning, but with different rationales and effects. We then provide a second‐order analysis based on a sense‐making perspective that highlights the importance of retrospective understandings of the organization's history and the importance of various legitimacy expectations to different parts of the multinational. Finally, we emphasize the role of social skill in sense‐making that enables the persistence of multiple systems and the absence of overt tensions and conflict within organizations.

We explore how the Balanced Scorecard ( BSC ), as a management accounting technique, was developed and marketed as a general management practice. Drawing on actor network theory ( ANT ), we analyze interviews with key actors associated with the BSC , insights gained from attending BSC training workshops, and other documentary evidence to construct a history of the BSC . Our historical analysis offers theoretical tools to understand how the various features of the accounting technique were translated and transformed, that is, shaped and solidified. This translation entailed processes of modification, labelling, framing, and specification of abstract categories and cause‐effect relations. We also examine the networks and associations that both shape the form of the BSC and mobilize the interests of various constituencies around it to produce what can be regarded as a global management technology. Finally, we highlight the strategies and actions used to maintain control of this technique through its continuous reinvention, and, by doing so, we emphasize the idea of strategic agency.

Literature examining dynamics between the state and self-styled professional fields is well established and points towards the crucial interrelations between the two. However, this literature evinces an occidental orientation, largely privileging the notion of a state characterised by self-limiting, liberal ideology and that is captured by dominant interests. More recent work on Asia describes a different context within which to understand how the state influences both the structure of accounting fields and the behaviour of actors therein. We build upon this literature here by reporting the results of a detailed empirical study on the dynamics of the accounting field in China. Drawing on archival analysis and interviews with 63 regulators, state actors and accounting practitioners, we show that the state successfully exercises symbolic power in the implementation of state strategies. Conceptually, we argue that the state is a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon existing in the cognitive structures of key actors in the accounting field in China, thereby drawing attention to further reaching forms of state influence than have hitherto been recognised in extant literature on accounting fields. Specifically, we point towards the importance of doxa (Bourdieu, 1977, 1992, 2014), exemplified by the taken-for-granted principles of classification and ranking produced by the state, in the form of firms and individuals ‘thinking like the state’ as the basis of symbolic power in the accounting field in China. We also reflect on the limits of such power.

In this paper, we test two models of executive pay that have not received much attention in research on Chinese listed companies: managerial power theory and tournament theory. We find that structural power (executive share ownership) and prestige power (executive education) are significantly positively related to executive remuneration, and political power (Executive/Party Secretary duality) positively and weakly related to executive remuneration. We also find that executive directors' organization level (as reflected in executive pay level for each of the three highest paid executives) is positively related to executive remuneration and the relationship is convex, and negatively related to the interaction between executive directors' organization level and government ownership. Tournament prize (executive pay) is not related to the number of contestants in the tournament and is negatively related to the interaction term between number of contestants and government ownership. Finally, earnings per share (EPS) as a measure of firm performance is positively related to the pay gap between contestants and negatively related to the interaction term between pay gap and government ownership. We explore the implications of these findings for reforming corporate governance in China.