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The Accounting Review Vol. 98 No. 4 2023

Reducing Strategy Surrogation: The Effects of Performance Measurement System Flexibility and Environmental Dynamism

Kelly K. Wang1; Mandy M. Cheng2; Linda Chang2

1 University of Technology Sydney · 2 UNSW Sydney

Abstract

Prior research shows that individuals exhibit a propensity to surrogate performance measures for their underlying strategy, resulting in suboptimal strategic decisions. We investigate whether the incorporation of flexibility in contemporary performance measurement systems (PMSs) reduces surrogation propensity in the context of product innovation and whether this effect varies depending on environmental dynamism. We conduct a 2 × 2 experiment and find that PMS flexibility significantly lowers managers' surrogation propensity when the business environment is more dynamic and when the investment decisions have opportunity costs. Our study contributes to the literature by identifying a viable way to reduce managers' surrogation propensity.

DOI
10.2308/tar-2019-0523
Volume
98
Issue
4
Pages
435-456
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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