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Public-sector reforms and balanced scorecard adoption: an Ethiopian case study

Belete Jember Bobe (Accounting, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia)
Dessalegn Getie Mihret (Accounting, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia)
Degefe Duressa Obo (Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

ISSN: 0951-3574

Article publication date: 21 August 2017

2647

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine adoption of the balanced scorecard (BSC) by a large public-sector health organisation in an African country, Ethiopia as part of a programme to implement a unified sector-wide strategic planning and performance monitoring system. The study explains how this trans-organisational role of the BSC is constituted, and explores how it operates in practice at the sector-and organisation-levels.

Design/methodology/approach

The study employs the case-study method. Semi-structured interview data and documentary evidence are analysed by drawing on the concept of translation from actor-network theory.

Findings

The case-study organisation adopted the BSC as a part of broader public-sector reforms driven by political ideology. Through a centralised government decision, the BSC was framed as a sector-wide system aimed at: aligning the health sector’s strategic policy goals with strategic priorities and operational objectives of organisations in the sector; and unifying performance-monitoring of the sector’s organisations by enabling aggregation of performance information to a sector level in a timely manner to facilitate health sector policy implementation. While the political ideology facilitated BSC adoption for trans-organisational use, it provided little organisational discretion to integrate financial administration and human resource management practices to the BSC framework. Further, inadequate piloting of information system use for the anticipated BSC model, originating from the top-down approach followed in the BSC implementation, inhibited implementation of the BSC with a balanced emphasis between the planning and performance monitoring roles of the BSC. As a result, the BSC underwent a pragmatic shift in emphasis and was reconceptualised as a system of enhancing strategic alignment through integrated planning, compared to the balanced emphasis between the planning and performance monitoring roles initially anticipated.

Originality/value

The study provides a theory-based explanation of how politico-ideological contexts might facilitate the framing of novel roles for the BSC and how the roles translate into practice.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the interview participants for generously sharing their views. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments received from the guest editors of this special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, and from two anonymous reviewers on earlier versions of the paper.

Citation

Bobe, B.J., Mihret, D.G. and Obo, D.D. (2017), "Public-sector reforms and balanced scorecard adoption: an Ethiopian case study", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 30 No. 6, pp. 1230-1256. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-03-2016-2484

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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