This study extends prior research on general Balanced Scorecard (BSC) evaluation tendencies (e.g., Lipe and Salterio 2000; Ittner et al. 2003; Banker et al. 2004) by documenting that patterns in BSC evaluations vary with a quality of the evaluator. Specifically, using data from an experimental performance assessment exercise, we find that evaluators' “ambiguity intolerance” (Budner 1962) influences their reaction to variation among performance measures within a BSC category. Further, we find that increased variation within a BSC category causes ambiguity‐intolerant evaluators to give lower performance evaluation scores when the BSC category indicates relatively strong performance, but has no significant effect when the BSC category indicates relatively weak performance. These results are consistent with the argument that ambiguity‐intolerant individuals are more likely to discount or ignore ambiguous information when the ambiguity relates to positive information. Our findings have significant practical implications regarding the accuracy and consistency of BSC evaluations.
