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This article examines learnings that come from the design phase of a BSC. The research is based first of all on a conceptual framework that tends to suggest that the BSC, by inviting to rethink the strategy, becomes a lever of organizational learning. Then, the chosen methodology mobilizes a processual approach based on research intervention and a longitudinal study of two cases of industrial enterprises. The results of the two case studies first showed that, during the design of the BSC, the multiple interactions between the actors generated a three-fold process of knowledge acquisition, information distribution and interpretation of the information. However, it also emerged that, despite the abandonment of the BSC a few years after its implementation, both companies capitalized on the knowledge gained during the design phases of the scheme. The discussion of the results then shows the decisive role of the design phase of the BSC and its strategic map in the ensuing learning. It also reveals the weaknesses of the BSC and its learning facing a control primarly oriented toward a financial perspective.

This study evaluates EBITDA as a financial performance measure and investigates the use of EBITDA in financial reporting. First, we take issue with recent comments that both the SEC and the IASB have levied against non-GAAP earnings numbers, and in particular EBITDA. While EBITDA allegedly provides an accurate reflection of the operations and abstracts from how assets are financed, we argue that (net) operating profit already provides this information without the necessity of making subjective adjustments. Also, our evidence suggests that EBITDA paints a rosy picture of the firm's profitability and cash-generating ability. Next, using textual analysis, we investigate the prevalence of EBITDA in financial disclosures based on a large sample of 15,895 annual reports and 51,758 earnings releases from S&P 1500 firms between 2005 and 2016. We find that 14.8% of sample firms disclose and emphasize EBITDA numbers. EBITDA disclosures modestly increase over time and tend to be rather sticky in nature. In our cross-sectional analyses, we find that, consistent with our hypotheses, EBITDA-reporting firms are smaller, more leveraged, more capital-intensive, less profitable and have longer operating cycles than non-EBITDA reporting firms. They also exhibit higher forecast errors and a higher likelihood of missing the analyst forecast benchmark. Additional tests further underscore the opportunistic nature of EBITDA disclosures as we find that these firm characteristics are more strongly associated with the disclosure of adjusted EBITDA measures, and less strongly associated with the disclosure of EBITA and EBIT.

This paper analyses how financial tools foster medico-financial hybridization in a French hospital. It identifies mechanisms related to the conception and use of financial tools that facilitate mutual learning between financial and non-financial actors and a dual hybridization of medical and accounting expertise and practices. It also clarifies the concept of hybridization considering it as the linking and transformation of separate entities. This emphasizes both the importance of learning how to relate financial evaluation and operational activity and of learning from financial actors. Hybridization of financial expertise and practices may then facilitate medico-financial hybridization.

This article addresses the paradox of the seeming limited diffusion of management accounting innovations. The relationship between product diversity and the adoption of Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is used as an illustrative example. Twenty-four studies were the subject of a meta-analysis. Overall, the results show a significant and positive relationship between product diversity and ABC adoption. However, product variety is the only type of diversity to be both significantly and positively associated with ABC adoption. The discussion of these results makes it possible to at least partially resolve the paradox of innovations in management accounting by proposing a new way of measuring their diffusion. Finally, we propose several original avenues for future research in management accounting innovations.