What was needed was directed continuous improvement. Providing direction meant
that managers needed to carefully specify a mission and strategy for their organization
and identify the objectives, performance measures, and initiatives necessary to accomplish
this overall mission and strategy. In other words, a strategic-based responsibility accounting
system was the next step in the evolution of responsibility accounting. A
strategic-based responsibility accounting system (strategic-based performance
management system) translates the strategy of an organization into operational objectives
and measures. A strategic performance management system can assume different
forms, the most common being that of the Balanced Scorecard. The Balanced
Scorecard is a strategic-based performance management system that typically identifies
objectives and measures for four different perspectives: the financial perspective, the customer
perspective, the process perspective, and the learning and growth perspective.1