ABSTRACT

The proximate roots of performance measurement lie in a 1980s shift in management accountancy away from lagging and financial indicators towards leading ones that indicate potential for future value creation, especially regarding intangible assets and functions. This paper proposes that such innovations in accountancy are not merely technical but are driven by contextual economic imperatives. It shows how PM articulates with capital owner demand for maximal value creation under the shareholder value model of the corporation rationalized through neoliberal economic thought and new economy discourses. Performance metrics cascade through organizational levels so as to highlight the apparent contributions of actors held accountable for aspects of value creation. They allow a subtle shift away from Taylorist operational statistics based on demonstrated achievable values towards prospective calculative rationality that enjoins all to manage their own capacity to increase value amid expectations of continuous improvement. Quantifying labour by putative performance outputs also allows for differential levels of reward and the marketization of wage relations favoured by agency theory. It has been central to new ways of eliciting more output for less reward from gig economy and neotaylorist workers, while also enabling the emergence of the equity-owning ‘superstar manager class’ that Piketty sees as distinctive of contemporary inequality. Its members largely configure and benefit from performance-related pay frameworks that reward executives for minimizing costs relative to ‘maximizing’ of the value chains they oversee.

摘要

绩效衡量的直接根源在于 1980 年代管理会计从滞后和财务指标转向指示未来价值创造潜力的领先指标，特别是在无形资产和功能方面。本文提出，会计中的此类创新不仅是技术性的，而且是由环境经济要求驱动的。它展示了在通过新自由主义经济思想和新经济话语合理化的公司股东价值模型下，PM如何与资本所有者对最大价值创造的需求相结合。绩效指标通过组织级别进行级联，以突出对价值创造方面负责的参与者的明显贡献。它们允许从基于已证明可实现价值的泰勒主义运营统计转向前瞻性计算理性，这要求所有人管理自己的能力以在持续改进的预期中增加价值。通过假定的绩效输出来量化劳动力也允许不同的奖励水平和代理理论所支持的工资关系的市场化。它是从零工经济和新裁缝工人那里以更少的报酬获得更多产出的新方法的核心，同时也促成了皮凯蒂认为是当代不平等的独特特征的持股“超级明星经理阶层”的出现。