1、本科毕业论文（设计） 外 文 翻 译 原文： Creating and Popularizing a Management Accounting Idea: The Case of the Balanced Scorecard 1. Introduction This study seeks to understand how management accounting techniques, often created in local practice, are developed, extended and popularized into global management pract
2、ice. Commonly, the creation and spread of new ideas is depicted as a story of great innovators and the diffusion of ideas, a rationalist story that stresses the pull of fixed ideas. Instead, we concentrate on the fragility and variability of ideas and the importance of ideas being pushed along. We s
3、tress the crucial role of customization and translation in converting an idea into a tool that managers can regard as practical, with the potential to be used by thousands of organizations around the world. How does an idea, easily dismissed as impractical, a fad or ambiguous, become an acceptable i
4、nnovation and even a taken for granted component of good management? We concentrate on the Balanced Scorecard as an example in order to provide an in depth understanding of the processes by which management accounting ideas enter the world of specific organizational practices and technologies. The B
5、SC has been outlined in a series of influential articles and best-selling business books (Kaplan and Norton, 1992, 1996) that now forms the basis of a major consulting industry and set of organizational practices. We focus on the processes by which ideas of a strategic performance measurement system
6、 are translated into a multitude of specific practices that today comprise the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). This study is concerned with the implementation of the key ideas of the BSC. However we do not focus on how one or more organizations adopt and adapt the BSC, which would study adopters and users
7、 of the BSC (Wenisch, 2003, Tuomela, 2006). While such studies can provide valuable insight on how the BSC has been used and adapted across site, such studies take for granted the idea of the BSC as an established technology, accept organizational boundaries as more or less fixed, and do not problem
8、atize its purpose and development. We focus on how new ideas and concepts enter into managerial thinking and thereby have the potential to become widely known, accepted and implemented. 1.1. The Balanced Scorecard as a Management Innovation Managerial discourse has seen a shift from financial-orient
9、ed management control systems to strategic management accounting systems with a focus on value creation (Ittner and Larker, 2001). A diverse set of managerial accounting techniques have been introduced since the 1990s, including the Balanced Scorecard, economic value added, and target costing etc. T
10、he BSC has gained currency, seems to have some durability and has spread rapidly during the past decade. According to the editors of the Harvard Business Review, the BSC is one of the most important management ideas in the last seventy-five years (cited in Meyer, 2002: pp. 2). Kaplan and Nortons BSC
11、, for example, emphasizes non-financial measures to complement financial measures. It emphasizes four perspectives on performance: financial, customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth and stresses a link between performance measures and strategy (Otley, 1999, p.374). The BSC has
12、 been prescribed as a technique that can be used to translate an organizations strategy into terms that are understandable, and can be communicated and acted upon. It promotes the use of the language of measurement to define more clearly the meaning of abstract concepts like quality, customer satisf
13、action, and organizational learning and growth (Kaplan and Norton, 2001). The concept of the BSC developed rapidly after the publication of Kaplan and Norton (1992). The following outlines significant developments: The BSC had its origins in complaints that management accounting was too focused on f
14、inancial measures (Kaplan, 1984； Hayes and Abernathy, 1980). Revised performance measurement systems were proposed to capture leading indicators of performance. In 1991, Kaplan and Norton began to shape the concept with 12 companies through a research project sponsored by a research arm of KPMG. In
15、1992, Kaplan and Norton published the results of this initial study in the Harvard Business Review, presenting the BSC as “measures that drive performance”. The BSC was presented as an innovative system which complemented the financial measures with measures on customer satisfaction, internal proces
16、ses and the organizations innovation, learning and growth (Kaplan and Norton, 1992, p.71). In 1996, Kaplan and Norton published their first book on the BSC, arguing that it is a way of “translating strategy into action”, a methodology for promoting strategic management. In 2001, Kaplan and Norton re
17、leased their second book, The Strategy Focused Organization, which describes the BSC as an enterprise strategic management system, integral for a strategy focused organization. In 2004, Kaplan and Norton published their third book on “Strategy Mapping” as a way of “Transforming Intangible Assets int
18、o Tangible Results”. The concept of strategy map, first articulated in 2000, is proposed as a visual way to communicate an organizations perspectives, objectives, and measures, and the causal linkages between them. The concept of strategy matrix is also proposed as a useful visualization and summari
19、zation tool to display objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives. Kaplan and Nortons fourth book, “Alignment: using the BSC to create corporate synergies”, explores one of the elements on strategy focused organizations (SFO). We can expect further books that further develop each element of a SF
20、O. The take up of the idea of the BSC is evidenced by numerous books and articles in academic and professional journals and magazines, seminars and workshops, case studies and public conferences and software applications devoted to the technique. Moreover, surveys (eg., Malmi, 2001； Kald and Nilsson, 2000； Silk, 1998), suggest that the BSC has been adopted and implemented in various countries and industries. For example, recent surveys indicate that approximately 60% of large US companies
