MBS

Bibliography: pages 136-155.

Historically, management accounting literature has articulated the benefits of performance measurements systems (PMSs) as effectively enforcing and supporting organizations' existing strategic objectives. More recently, management accounting literature advocates the uses of PMSs in guiding the review of an organisation's current strategy and enabling the development of future strategy. This literature calls for more empirical evidence of the existance of these benefits. The current competitive and recessionary conditions have led to a reassessment by Irish organisations of their strategic objectives. Multinational companies are tempted to relocate to lower wage rate economics, unless Irish divisions can prove that they can provide added value. To address the dearth of empirical evidence of the use of PMS in the reassessment of strategy in irsh organisations, this dissertation analysis the strategic development of a shared services centre, namely PepsiCo's Cork Shared Services Centre (SSC) and the influence of performance measurement on its developments. This dissertation integrates the emergent strategy framework of Mintzberg (1994) and the contemporary performance measurement literature, mainly of Kaplan and Norton (1992) and Jazayeri and Scapens (2008), to provide a framework to track the strategic development of the case study organisations and gain a better understanding of how the PMS influences strategic change. Cork SSC, the case study used in this dissertation, is the European financial shared services centre of PepsiCo International. It was established in the mid 1990s in an effort to solidify the long-term viability of the Finance Department of Cork Concentrates (a production facility in Ireland). This paper produces a timeline depicting how initially the strategy of the SSC lead to the development of the PMS, and, more significantly for this dissertation, how the PMS highlighted gaps and opportunities within the organization's strategy and acted as an accelerator in development of the strategic direction of the organisation. This dissertation empirically verifies the hypothesis that the PMS can guide the review of an organisation's current strategy and enable the development of future strategy. It finds that by focusing on performance measures, an organisation can recognise its strengths and use these strengths to avail of opportunities within the environment as they present themselves and realign its strategy accordingly. As companies are actively seeking to reassess their strategies in the volatile business environment that exists today, there is merit in using their performance mesurements systems as a driver for determining the strengths and future strategy of the organisation". - (Author's abstract)