The Balanced Scorecard as a Boundary Object: From Diagnostic to Interactive Control

Organizational performance increasingly depends on the ability to carry out an internal strategy while promoting organizational learning. In other words, two control levers need to be managed: diagnostic control and interactive control. To do this, organizations often combine several tools, either for diagnostic or interactive control, with a single management control system generally meeting one or the other of these two aims. The originality of this paper is its focus on how the purpose of a control tool can change during organizational use. In this intervention research study, we participated in the creation and implementation of a balanced scorecard in five incubators over the course of a little more than a year. We then analyzed the translation process the tool had undergone in each organization from the perspective of actor-network theory and the concept of boundary objects. The major contribution of this paper is to show how a balanced scorecard originally introduced for diagnostic control can progressively be transformed into an interactive control tool. The key to this transformation lies in the controversies that arise during the translation process and their resolution, which is made possible by the plasticity of the balanced scorecard as a boundary object.