Historical Background Of Balance Scorecard

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Abstract

Businesses use many indicators in order to measure what is going on in their markets. Good leaders of organizations every time check if they are achieving their business strategies, if they are meeting their customer needs and also the most important thing if they are making any profit. Therefore, an easy way of getting those answers is by using Balance Scorecards (BSC) which focuses on the factors that are critical for the success of the business. The historical background of Balanced Scorecard approach started at 1990s as a system developed through some innovation and changes by Robert Kaplan, an accounting professor at Harvard Business School and David Norton, a consultant also from the Boston area. It was firstly developed as …show more content…

Therefore, having a clear vision and strategy for the business is the key to the success of the Balanced Scorecard (Haapasalo, Ingalsuo, & Lenkkeri, 2006). The popularity of BSC is related from the fact that it has demonstrated its effectiveness through different research designs and it also offers a clear prescription as to what should companies measure in order to get a balanced financial prospective. Furthermore, working with scorecards, managers are able to clarify and operationalize strategies as it performs an integrative function by bringing together disparate measures in a single report (Knott, 2006). Feedbacks for internal process and external outcomes are provided through this performance management approach, focusing on four perspectives which are: Financials, Customer Perspective, Internal-Business Processes, Learning and Growth (Kaplan & Norton, 1996). Balanced Scorecards also helps companies to explore and find causes and effect relationships between those four areas in order to continuously improve strategic results and performance. The terms “lead and lag indicators” are used to indicate that the …show more content…

Nevertheless, the main issue for managers is how to implement those strategies in the best way possible which would affect the success of the business. Hence, they need to use performance measure which provides the link between strategies and actions. As BSC serves as a link between long-term goals of an organisation and short-term operational control, it attempts determining on daily, monthly and also yearly basis what is needed in order to achieve the success of organisation and find out what is limiting that success. It does it not only at a high management strategy levels, but it communicates it to the operational levels as well. According to Basu (2009), the most important aspect of the BSC is transforming of projects into tangible performance measures. Moreover, BSC provides a framework which links everything together, capturing the cause and effect relationships at every part of organisation. Another benefit that managers can get by using BSC is its simplicity, four perspectives – one driving another, enabling employee at all levels of the company to put their focus on main business drives. Furthermore, BSC serves as an indicator of the organisation to what knowledge, what skills and what systems its employees need (learning and growth) in order to innovate the right strategic, capabilities and

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