More generally, cross-sectional field studies can deepen our insights into the constructs and relations commonly studied empirically. Compared with studying management accounting phenomena in individual cases, cross-sectional field studies can broaden our understanding by detecting cross-case patterns in specific issues that are otherwise embedded in detailed case write-ups. For example, cross-sectional field studies can detect and document variation in interpretations of practice-defined variables such as activity-based costing or the balanced scorecard or important dimensions of theory-defined variables with a "social" interpretation such as "goal difficulty" or "flexibility