Modell’s paper, ‘Strategy, political regulation and management
control in the public sector: institutional and
critical perspectives’, combines neo-institutional theory
and critical theory to explore how management control
practices (particularly inspired by the Balanced Scorecard)
shape the unfolding process of strategy formation in a
Swedish central government agency. The paper offers an
interesting longitudinal study of the evolution of SMA tools
and techniques in their social and organisational context
(cf. Bhimani and Langfield-Smith, 2007). Modell exposes
not only how such SMA techniques become implicated in
(new) emerging management control practices, but also
how such techniques have a reconstructing impact on the
meaning of the notion of ‘strategy’ itself.
Modell uses critical theory to extend (in his view, sometimes
limited) neo-institutional analyses and, in so doing,
claims to offer further insight into the dynamics (including
unintended consequences) of strategy formation. Such
focus on the evolutionary complexities of (strategic) management
accounting practices, as inter-connected and
cumulative processes over time, would seem to sit comfortably
alongside earlier theoretical work in alternative
(old) ‘institutional’ management accounting literature (see
Burns and Scapens, 2000), although Modell puts forward
the case for mobilising neo-institutional theory with critical
theory.
Bisbe and Malagueno, in ‘Using strategic performance
measurement systems for strategy formulation: does
it work in dynamic environments?’ aim to provide ‘a
better understanding of the extent to which strategic
performance measurement systems (SPMS) influence
organisational performance through the processes of
(re)formulating intended strategies’. Performance measurement
systems may in practice be used prospectively
to plan and formulate strategy, concurrently to support
implementation and retrospectively for knowledge management
as well as for strategic and operational control
purposes (Nixon et al., 2011).