The latter results are consistent with Ittner and Larcker (1995) who found that quality
programs are associated with greater use of nontraditional (i.e., nonfinancial) measures and
reward systems, but combining nontraditional measures with extensive quality programs
does not improve performance. However, by differentiating between objective and subjective
nonfinancial measures—thereby going beyond Ittner and Larcker (1995)—we find that
performance is higher when the performance measures used in conjunction with a qualitybased
manufacturing strategy are of the subjective type.