Insights on the Balanced Scorecard

Citation

Bourne, M. (2006), "Insights on the Balanced Scorecard", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 10 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/mbe.2006.26710caa.001

Insights on the Balanced Scorecard

Continuing on a key theme in issue 2, four of the papers in this issue discuss the most widely-used performance measurement and management framework, the Balanced Scorecard. These papers combine insights from research and from practice.

Paranjape, Rossiter and Pantano begin the issue with a review of the research undertaken on the Balanced Scorecard, particularly focusing on its role as a performance measurement framework. Despite extensive research and implementation in many organisations, they reflect that problems are still often encountered during implementation and there is still little empirical evidence to demonstrate the effects of Balanced Scorecards on performance. They highlight operational difficulties in implementation and the need for further attention to be paid to issues of how to design measures and the maintenance of dynamic measurement systems

Papenhausen and Einstein discuss the actual application of a Balanced Scorecard in an academic setting. Educational institutions are increasingly becoming accountable for their performance, and more than ever their stakeholders are taking an interest in the outcomes they deliver. This paper reports a Scorecard application in the highly competitive Business School sector including lessons learnt and measures that have been applied.

Bromley, Cuthbertson, Martinez and Kennerley go on to discuss the specific experiences and lessons learnt from the application of the Balanced Scorecard in a UK Energy company – EDF Energy. They report the practical issues of implementation and customisation to reflect the organisational context, highlighting the management processes and cultural issues that have been the key to success.

Calandro and Lane conclude the section on the Balanced Scorecard with a paper that discusses the issue of risk management and its integration with performance management. They observe that risk management is an issue of increasing importance and urgency for organisations, as recent corporate scandals have demonstrated. Despite this importance, Colandro and Lane observe the lack of integration of risk management and performance management. In response they propose an “Enterprise Risk Scorecard” which integrates risk with the Balanced Scorecard in order to address this gap.

Insights from research

The remaining two papers in this issue report the findings of research in other areas related to the management of performance.

Chambers discusses a key issue related to performance measurement and management – the role of auditing and assurance. In the public and private sectors accountability to internal and external stakeholders is of ever increasing importance. To better understand this accountability, Chambers discusses the development of audit assurance practice and the philosophy of auditing, providing a better understanding of a key approach of performance monitoring. He concludes by looking at the future role of auditing which is increasingly prevalent in today’s society.

In the final paper in this issue, Rajagopal discusses brand personality, brand identity, brand value and customer relationships. Building on literature from brand management and personality traits, the paper likens the relationship between brands and consumers to the relationship between people. This analysis provides an interesting perspective on how to manage brands and the importance of how brand personalities are built in consumers’ minds. It also discusses the relationship between brand personality, brand value and consumers with its implications for financial performance

Mike Bourne, Mike Kennerley