Finance for Non-Financial Managers training in FribourgFinance for non-financial managers in the canton of Fribourg: should units be compared using the same indicators?
In the bilingual canton of Fribourg, the agri-food sector, industry and the university community often work across the Sarine, switching between French and German in everyday management. For a non-financial manager, this raises a question: are identical indicators enough to compare units fairly when their missions differ?
1. What the literature establishes: the weight of common indicators
Mary Gascho Lipe and Steven E. Salterio (2000, The Accounting Review) show, in an experiment involving the balanced scorecard, that evaluations favour measures shared across units over measures specific to individual units. Information that is available is therefore not necessarily information that is actually used. For a non-financial manager, reading each figure correctly does not yet guarantee a balanced assessment of performance.
2. A mechanism: making the link to strategy explicit
Rajiv D. Banker, Hsihui Chang and Mina J. Pizzini (2004, The Accounting Review) show experimentally that evaluators give greater weight to strategy-linked measures when they have information about that strategy. Selecting indicators is therefore not enough: their purpose must be understandable. A measure of material losses or process validation becomes more relevant when its expected connection to costs, revenues or risks is made explicit.
3. The hasty conclusion: abandoning all common measures
It would be excessive to conclude that each unit should have a dashboard that cannot be compared with any other. Shared definitions remain necessary for discussing financial results and allocating resources. The more nuanced approach is to retain a common foundation while examining the specific factors that might explain differences, without turning every distinctive feature into an excuse. (our executive and employee training programmes)
4. The limits of the evidence and of translation
These experiments concern controlled evaluation settings; they do not demonstrate that a particular dashboard improves business results in Fribourg. Nor do they test the effect of bilingualism on financial judgements. In practice, translating a label does not ensure that scope, reporting period and calculation method are understood in the same way.
5. A practical check in Fribourg
Consider a hypothetical case: a Fribourg agri-food company compares a production workshop with a pilot unit developing a process alongside a university partner, in a bilingual industrial environment. One possible exercise in the “Finance for non-financial managers” programme is to prepare a French-German reference sheet specifying each common or unit-specific indicator’s definition, calculation and expected link to a financial issue. Participants first evaluate the units using only common measures, then reconsider their judgements using the complete reference sheets and record the reasons for any changes. The check tracks the proportion of judgements changed and whether an explicit financial justification is provided: it measures the use of information, not a demonstrated improvement in performance. To go further: explore the Finance for Non-Financial Managers training in Fribourg in the canton of Fribourg, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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