Nevertheless, deeper empirical research is required into the political processes
associated with defining what is strategically important and how such processes affect
and are affected by the weight attached to various performance aspects. In particular,
research needs to be extended from the rather static analyses of power informing prior
BSC research to examine how changing strategic priorities are intricately intertwined
with shifting power relationships and how this shapes the social premises of management (Yang and Modell, 2011). Modell (2009, 2012) sheds some light on this phenomenon through a longitudinal study of the implication of the BSC in the process of strategy formation in a Swedish central government agency. The development of BSC inspired practices had an important mediating effect in this regard and initially fostered a broadly based search for strategically relevant performance aspects and experimenting with new performance indicators to meet diverse stakeholder interests.
However, in extending the analysis over time, Modell (2012) revealed how the range of
strategic priorities gradually narrowed as senior management became more concerned
with aligning performance measurement with specific regulatory pressures being
exercised with increasing force by the government. Broader management cadres also
came to take this view of strategy for granted which, paradoxically, marginalized
activities of direct relevance for achieving the organization’s over-riding, social
objectives and serving the wider public interest. This illustrates how the power
embedded in performance measurement may shape managerial mindsets to the detriment of some stakeholder interests. Moreover, it extends the view of strategic alignment as a unidirectional process flowing from the coupling of performance targets and indicators to strategic objectives to illuminate how changing performance management practices shape the very notion of strategy (Vaivio, 2005). More research of this kind is required to enhance our understanding of how the notion of strategic alignment is imbued with context-specific meanings and how this interacts with changing power relationships.