Title: Management Accounting benchmarking measures: the case of the Financial Services Industry

Authors: Mostaq M. Hussain

Addresses: College of Business Administration, University of New Brunswick-Saint John, Oland Hall, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

Abstract: Benchmarking is a common Management Accounting (MA) tool for measuring performance. Knowingly, financial performances are easier to benchmark than Non-financial Performance/s (NFP) for different reasons. This study investigates the role of MA benchmarking in NFP measurement in the Financial Services Industry (FSI). Twelve banks have been studied to investigate the role of benchmarking in NFP measurement. This study finds that benchmarking is one of the most commonly used techniques of performance measurement in studied FSI. Finnish FSI uses benchmarking techniques more than Swedish FSI do, but none of the Japanese FSI practices benchmarking though they highly recognised the importance of NFP measurement.

Keywords: benchmarking; non-financial performance; NFP; management accounting; financial services industry; process management; performance measurement; banking; Finland; Sweden; Japan.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPMB.2006.011334

International Journal of Process Management and Benchmarking, 2006 Vol.1 No.4, pp.370 - 386

Published online: 18 Nov 2006 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article