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Purpose – This study investigates the interplay between strategic performance measurement and management accounting to gain a deeper understanding of how strategic measures of performance evolve with the managerial accounting practices.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The study explored the performance measures used at a bank focused on the development and sustainability initiatives in Africa. Thirty-two semistructured interviews were conducted with directors, managers, and analysts from nine different categories of job families.

Findings – Analysis shows that managers assimilate a comprehensive, multifaceted measurement system to understand the creation and delivery of sustainable value. The results show that the managerial accounting practices adapt to incorporate an integrated set of performance measures that afford sustainable value to the stakeholders. The findings provide rich insights into how the managers adapt their information assimilation practices to the changing demands of the different stakeholders and adopt practices which innovate measures of performance that are aligned to the strategic goals. Finally, the findings illustrate that the interplay between strategic performance and managerial accounting practices has the potential to improve or inhibit sustainable development.

Originality/Value – Little is known about how performance measures evolve, and how they interplay with the managerial accounting practices within organizations. This study reveals that the interplay of strategic performance measurement and managerial accounting can only be understood in the confluence of organizational change and sustainability. While acknowledging the need to embrace change and sustainability simultaneously, the study offers insights into the dynamics of change – the duality of emergent managerial accounting practices and the evolution of strategic performance measurement systems.

The purpose of this paper is first, to discuss the theoretical assumptions, qualities, problems and myopia of the dominating quantitative and qualitative approaches; second, to describe the methodological lessons that the authors learned while conducting a series of longitudinal studies on the use and usefulness of a specialized balanced scorecard; and third, to encourage researchers to actually use multiple methods and sources of data to address the very many accounting phenomena that are not fully understood.

This paper is an opinion piece based on the authors' experience conducting a series of longitudinal mixed method studies.

The authors suggest that in many studies, using a mixed method approach provides the best opportunity for addressing research questions.

This paper provides encouragement to those who may wish to bridge the authors' ideological gaps and to those who are actively trying to do so.