Design Qualities and Their Interdependencies in Performance Measurement Systems: On the Contours of a Meta-structure

Previous studies have extensively examined the interdependencies between various management control systems. However, the interdependencies within individual management control systems have received relatively little attention. This study explores the interdependencies between four design qualities—diversity, collectivity, subjectivity and relativity—within performance measurement systems (PMSs). Although the accounting literature has intensively studied these design qualities and their consequences, they have typically been examined in isolation. This study shifts the focus to explore their interplay. Drawing on the literature on design qualities and their consequences for performance evaluation, this study reveals the complementary and substitutional effects between design qualities. The study makes two key contributions to the literature. First, it enriches the management control literature by demonstrating how systems thinking and concepts—originally developed to understand the interdependencies between different management control systems—can be applied at a more granular level to provide deeper insights into the inner workings of a single control system, such as a PMS, and how and why the effects of using these design qualities in PMS design are interdependent. Second, the study contributes to the performance measurement literature by conceptualising the design qualities as four aspects representing a new meta-structure in PMSs. This perspective, which has received limited attention in prior research, holds the potential to generate new insights into the effectiveness of PMS design for performance evaluation in future studies.