Some Thoughts on the Literature/Evidence Review, Models and Reflection

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE LITERATURE/EVIDENCE REVIEW, MODELS AND REFLECTION

Robin Matthews

Introduction

A systematic literature review might look something like the following.

1. Database search; multiple sources, academic, business and consulting papers, doctoral theses, web and social media searches, arts sources – novels, poetry, plays, painting, sculpture, statues, television, media and other artefacts.
2. Categorisation of leadership derived from databases in 1; definitions, leadership versus management, variety of forms and leadership theories, leadership styles, and so on.
3. Decisions about how to select among databases and categories. What are the criteria for choice among sources and topics; peer review, citation, opinion surveys…….
4. Synthesis of results from a selected number of chosen sources; choice is determined by issue – review of a particular class of leadership theories. This involves choice of a class of theories, identifying the most prevalent/frequent interests expressed in the sources, identifying gaps, emphasising the evolution of the concept concerned, taking stock of where the subject matter has reached now and opportunities for further research.
5. The previous sections are quite broad; a matter of identifying references; a broad sketch of issues. Now comes a more detailed analysis of a few selected papers, chosen from the list of references UWS has provided (important to use some of these) and new papers you have discovered, plus additional references on dropbox.

You are not expected to carry out the above steps comprehensively in an assignment. They describe an ideal process for carrying a literature review for an institution such as NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence). The paper by Judge et al. (2002) describes a literature review that follows the NICE guidelines. But you should try to produce a literature review in the second part of your assignment that approximates to 1- 5 and Judge’s suggestions. Your thesis should be a closer approximation.

The Balanced Business Scorecard; example

The balanced business scorecard (BBS) is a relatively recent development in management accounting, by Kaplan and Norton (1992).The scorecard perspectives are financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth. The focus is on balance between the four perspectives.The use of nonfinancial measures appears to increase with the level of regulation. Google notes that there are 260,000 citations on the BBS

They claim that although managers use all kinds of techniques to evaluate performance, JIT, ABM, corporate reengineering, core capabilities and so on they frequently rely on one-dimensional accounting measures. They recommend the BBC as providing a a balance between long and short term objectives. The table below indicates some of the measures used to evaluate the BBS.

Balanced Business scorecard

There appears to be two ways of using the BBS; for classic scorecard perspectives as compared to the causal linkages approach (Kaplan and Norton (1996, 2000). Later developments tie the scorecard to a strategy map or a value driver map as it sometimes caught. Strategy maps are intended to translate results into testable hypotheses and causal chains.

Very few firms do check on causality when they adopt BBC methodology and when they do so very few test the hypotheses they set out. Psychological explanations of the way managers interpret results may be more significant than economic explanations (Ittner, et al. 2003)[i].

Tayler (2010) uses and experiments to test whether managers interpret data in such a way as to arrive at conclusions that are consistent with those they most desire. What is results show is that managers who are involved are more likely to see strategic initiatives as successful and those who are not involved. This really is a test of what the authors call motivated reason.

Tapinos et al (2011) note that a great number of tools are taught in business schools for use in enhancing strategy, but does little evidence on how they actually influence the strategy process. The BBC is sometimes seen as an exception that can influence all elements of the strategy process. Their results of their study show that there are some differences, quite significant, between the strategy processes of firms that have implemented the BBC, the impact of the technique is doubtful.They also suggest that the BBS may be more suitable for large organisations which collect lots of data.

Moods often have respect and organisational behaviour and of course no difficult to track or account for. You get mood congruent judgements. Ding and Beulieu (2011) suggest that the influence of moods is greater when there is information overload; a 16 measure BSC may be too much for managers to cope with and make moods very important factors in judging performance to be good or bad. Things get better when the BSC is simplified. Processing capacity of individuals is important. Apart from referencescited above the bibliography below includes further critical papers.

Bibliography

Banker RD, Chang H, Pizzini MJ. 2004. The Balanced Scorecard: Judgmental Effects of Performance Measures Linked to Strategy. The Accounting Review 79 (1): 1-23.

DING S, BEAULIEU P. 2011. The Role of Financial Incentives in Balanced Scorecard-Based Performance Evaluations: Correcting Mood Congruency Biases. Journal of Accounting Research 49 (5): 1223-1247.

Huelsbeck DP, Merchant KA, Sandino T. 2011. On Testing Business Models. The Accounting Review 86 (5): 1631-1654.

Ittner CD, Larcker DF, Meyer MW. 2003. Subjectivity and the Weighting of Performance Measures: Evidence from a Balanced Scorecard. The Accounting Review 78 (3): 725-758.

JörgBudde. 2007. Performance Measure Congruity and the Balanced Scorecard. Journal of Accounting Research 45 (3): 515-539.

Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E:,Ilies, R., and Gerhardt, M. W. 2002. Personality and leadership: a qualitative and quantitative review.J Appl Psychol. 2002 Aug;87(4):765-80.

Kaplan, Robert S. and Norton, David P. 2000. The StrategyFocusedOrganization: How Balanced Scorecard; Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment, Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2000.

Kaplan, Robert S. and Norton, David P. Alignment: Using the Balanced Scorecard to Create CorporateSynergies. Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2006.

Libby T, Salterio SE, Webb A. 2004. The Balanced Scorecard: The Effects of Assurance and Process Accountability on Managerial Judgment. The Accounting Review 79 (4): 1075-1094.

Lipe MG, Salterio SE. 2000. The Balanced Scorecard: Judgmental Effects of Common and Unique Performance Measures. The Accounting Review 75 (3): 283-298.

Mary A. Malina and Frank H. Selto.2001. Communicating and Controlling Strategy: An Empirical Study of the Effectiveness of the Balanced Scorecard. Journal of Management Accounting Research: December 2001, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 47-90.

Tapinos E, Dyson RG, Meadows M. 2011. Does the Balanced Scorecard make a difference to the strategy development process? The Journal of the Operational Research Society 62 (5): 888-899.

Tayler WB. 2010. The Balanced Scorecard as a Strategy-Evaluation Tool: The Effects of Implementation Involvement and a Causal-Chain Focus. The Accounting Review 85 (3): 1095-1117.

Wisniewski M, Dickson A. 2001. Measuring Performance in Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary with the Balanced Scorecard. The Journal of the Operational Research Society 52 (10): 1057-1066.