Balanced Scorecard: Today's Challenges: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing March 2017
Balanced Scorecard: Today's Challenges: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing March 2017
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1 Introduction
Organizations are required to act in the best of their abilities in the face of competition
resulting from globalization and other market factors [1]. To respond to the
constraints of the new business environment, the successful organizations developed
three major strategies [2]: (1) Train employees in the use of IS/IT to provide
organizations of knowledge and responsiveness to answer the pressures to change. (2)
Choose for collaborative platforms involving all relevant stakeholders (customers,
suppliers and employees) in the business process. (3) Find ways of obtaining superior
performance using the frameworks to assist management processes. The inability to
achieve the “real” value from IS/IT investments lies mainly in the lack of alignment
between the business and the strategies for IS/IT [3]. Strategic alignment positively
influences IT effectiveness [4], [5], leading to greater business profitability [6]. From
the IS / IT point of view, problems of non-alignment with business strategy typically
result in reactive stances, and IS/IT is seen as a cost center, rather than viewed as a
strategic partner of business. From the point of view of business, the non-alignment of
IS/IT result in a decreasing income arising from the IS/IT investments and a reduction
of competitive capabilities for the organization [7]. With the shift to a new business
environment with great predominance of intangible assets such as knowledge and
innovation, organizations are required to manage environments of great complexity,
mobility and uncertainty [8]. The increasing emphasis on intellectual capital is
essential for the proper development of innovative products, promotion and to
improve the market value of the organization [9]. For many companies the
competitive advantage is seen as continuous process of performance improvement,
looking for best practices and enhancing new capabilities. This article considers the
different design choices of the BSC, the impact on the benefits, the overall results
obtained by the organizations and the reflection of the academic and professional
world.
There is considerable interest in the role of strategic PMS, such as BSC, in assisting
managers develop competitive strategies. The BSC arises from the urgent need to
measure the success of organizations, so that the vision and strategy are converted
into objectives, indicators and targets. In turn, these objectives and goals indicators
are translated from other perspectives, as well as financial, according to an integrated
system monitoring and improvement [26]. In the last decades, it has been underlined
the inadequacy of exclusive use of financial indicators [22]. BSC suggests a
combination of financial performance measures, with due attention to customer needs,
business processes and long-term sustainability. The BSC is reflected by the balance
between the lagging indicators that represent the measurement results, the past, and
the main representative indicators of future trends that will affect the results in the
future [27]. The BSC not only translate the strategy into operational terms, and
promotes the alignment of its organizational strategy translated into business units and
employees in carrying out daily tasks [28]. The main target is to create value
considering the intangible and intellectual capital as opposed to traditional financial
performance systems [29]. The BSC adds to traditional financial performance
measures, other three perspectives, namely, customers, internal processes and learning
and growth, thereby allowing the monitoring of progress in building internal
capabilities and acquiring the intangible assets that are crucial for future growth in
parallel with the development of the financial accompanying measures. Using the
BSC, organizations no longer rely simply financial performance indicators. An
important step for the implementation of the strategy involves the construction of a
consistent and reliable structure, which represents the network of relationships that
lead to the achievement of the objectives and implementation of the strategy. This
framework is known as the "strategic map", which describes the network of cause and
effect relationships between the organization's strategy and the daily employee’s tasks
[30]. The strategy map graphically displays the key variables for each of the BSC
perspectives, reflecting on all the organization's strategy. The process of defining the
strategy should be driven by a broad consensus among all stakeholders on what are
the key performance factors should be considered. The BSC is a process of change in
the way tasks are performed and the acceptance of this change has decisive influence
on the course of the process [31]. To this organizational dialogue process, top
management involvement is critical to achieving consensus required as to legitimize
and encourage the development and implementation of the BSC [32].
3.1 BSC strengths
Despite its worldwide adoption, the results of the BSC implementations raise several
criticisms that focus mainly on the following aspects:
Not all stakeholders were included in the BSC, namely, the suppliers and public
authorities, which can be decisive for many organizations. BSC makes invalid
assumptions about the causal relationships between performance indicators. [39].
The BSC provides no mechanism to maintain the relevance of the initially
defined measures [40], [41].
The lack of focus on the human resources dimension of organizations is perhaps
the greatest weakness of the BSC [17].
The BSC contains a serious failure in their construction, once it focused
management strictly on a set of pre-defined indicators and measures and they are
not able to respond to simple and fundamental question, such as “what our
competitors are doing? " [42].
The BSC does not monitor competition or technological developments. This
implies that does not consider the uncertainty inherent risks involved in the
events that can threaten this strategy. The effect of this control model can lead to
serious dysfunctional behaviour and loss of control over the implementation of
the strategy [43].
In practice organizations submerge in the task of generating indicators without
devoting sufficient time to the definition of the strategy and the results are
indicators that are not aligned with the strategic objectives [32].
Due to problems in the implementation of the strategy is difficult to achieve a
balance between financial and non-financial measures [44].
Rigidity or lack of flexibility [8], [45].
Understanding of BSC implementation and what its involves [46].
The BSC implementation requires a minimum set of resources for collection and
treatment of new data, and could create work overload in some departments [47].
Several studies revealing the vitality of BSC developments and these improvements
are a clear and appropriate response to criticism.
Sustainability BSC formulation. This approach is a starting point for integration
of environmental and social issues within the management process [48].
A framework for improving the efficiency and effectiveness at all levels of public
management [49].
Linking BSC with product development and innovation. A new performance
dimension that allows measuring the performance and the quality [50].
Analyses of the relationship between strategic alignment, motivation and
organisational performance in the BSC context [51].
Aligning IT capabilities with business objectives using the BSC [52].
Evaluation of the UK public healthcare system applying the BSC [53].
Linking the use of the BSC with Scenario Planning to reinforces the process of
formulation and strategy implementation [54].
Heathrow Terminal 5 project and the customised application of the BSC
Scorecard in a major infrastructure with multiple stakeholders [35].
A quasi-experiment usage to investigate incentives and branch performance in
the UK [55].
Studying BSC impact on manager´s job satisfaction [56].
Assigning the attribute weight in multiple decision making [57].
Matching the traditional BSC architecture with System Dynamics principles to
offer a better support for strategic management decisions [58].
BSC usage in collaborative and inter-organizational settings definition [59].
An IT BSC framework that mix together with business environment, balances
and control of the IT strategy [60].
A conceptual model combining BSC with the non-parametric technique known as
Data Envelopment Analysis. Using various interconnected models encapsulated
the four BSC perspectives [61].
Exploration of the linkage between the Benefits Dependency Network from
Benefits Management with Strategy Maps [62].
The hierarchical integration of the BSC with fuzzy linguistic for evaluate the
operating room performance in hospitals [63].
Development of the BSC for safety performance in Saudi schools that captures
all the relevant perspectives that influence the effectiveness of the safety
performance process [64].
Rebalancing BSC to accommodate a fifth perspective which considers the
interface between the firm and its external environment [65].
The development and implementation process of the BSC approach in an
educational institution. Extraction of twelve design principles for the BSC
development and implementation process [66].
A study highlighting that Private Cloud Computing will provide strategic values
for all BSC perspectives with some high expectations for the financial
perspective [67].
Research has shown that the BSC concept can be interpreted and understood in
different ways. In the original design of BSC, the main benefit was to help
organizations develop and implement effective business strategies. However, due to
different interpretations, organizations have implemented the BSC to support a wide
range of strategic objectives, namely: (1) As a strategic management tool to support
senior management decision making; (2) Improving the management of intellectual
capital (3) Developing an incentive system for employees; (4) Measuring
organizational performance and implementing strategy; (5) Improving the survival of
the small-scale organizations; (6) Allowing management to articulate, communicate
and monitor strategy implementation; (7) Developing strategic maps to provide a
clear view of operations and potential areas to create value; (8) Improving the strategy
achievement, since it transforms the strategy into tangible performance metrics, which
managers can track, alter or speed up.
Some of the most referred organizational problems are the communication,
coordination and control. Communication is essential when using the BSC.
Management must communicate strategy to employees and how they expect
employees to perform to achieve the corporate goals. The BSC does require
management to focus on creating strategy and defining ways that performance can be
measured in accordance with strategy. The BSC requires understanding, commitment
and support from the very top management. The problems surrounding the
“balancing” of the BSC four perspectives was been referenced recurrently as a source
of difficulties. The BSC must be constantly up-dated and that promote de re-
alignment with changing strategies and corporate structure. The research highlighted
further BSC improvements: (1) Future oriented. BSC must have implications on the
future performance too; (2) The BSC should consider the intuition of managers for
performance evaluation; (3) BSC measures must be linked with the strategy of the
organization; (4) BSC can be successful with supportive culture in the organization;
(5) BSC must be organised to support product developments and innovation; (6)
There must be responsiveness in the BSC to different external situations.
7 Conclusions
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Acknowledgments: The research work where this article is based on, has been supported by
FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, in the context of financed projects under the
Reference UID/SOC/04521/2013.