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Evaluation Of The Performance Measurement System

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2.3 Performance measurement system
Throughout history, PMS clearly have a considerable contribution to evaluate the success of organisations. According to Neely et al. (2002), performance measurement is "the process of quantifying the efficiency and effectiveness of past actions". Moullin (2003) indicates that "PM is evaluating how well organisations are managed and the value they deliver for customers and other stakeholders". The modern accounting framework can be traced back to the Middle Ages and since that time appraisal of performance has primarily been ground on financial criteria (Bruns, 1998).
2.3.1 Evolution of PMS
Until recently, financial measures remain as the central focus of PMS and act as the foundation of performance …show more content…

Management accounting researchers (Otley, 1999; Norreklit, 2000) have criticized depending exclusively on financial measures. As referred by Cumby and Conrod (2001), sustainable shareholder value and competitiveness advantages are actually driven by non-financial factors such as employee satisfaction, customer loyalty, internal processes and innovation. As a result, companies started to include non-financial measurements within their PAMs to gain better knowledge about the overall company situation (Ittner and Larcker, 2001; Speckbacher et al, 2003).
In fact, many of these PMS tools and technological innovations were transformed based on those traditional ones to better meet the organisation needs in the contemporary era. More than 30 popular cost and management accounting techniques have been introduced since 1950 (Refer to Table1). Abdel and Luther (2006) described that the most notable innovative management accounting techniques are Activity based costing (ABC), strategic management accounting and the BSC. Among all the modern management accounting tools and techniques, this paper focuses on BSC as a performance measurement system and will be discussed in the next section.
2.4 The concept of Balanced Scorecard
The BSC

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