Jens Paul Zühlke examines the discussion surrounding the three controlling instruments 'Activity-based Costing', 'Target Costing', and 'Balanced Scorecard' in the German-speaking world as well as in Great Britain and the USA, focusing on similarities and differences. He demonstrates that there are no fundamental patterns regarding the structure and development of instrument-related publication activities and the corresponding knowledge transfer, and that the dissemination of knowledge appears to be more the result of random processes.