A practitioner’s guide to the design of strategy map frameworks

The purpose of this study is to synthesise the prior literature on strategy maps to develop a practitioner’s guide to the design of strategy map frameworks. Robert Kaplan and David Norton introduced the strategy map in their 2000 Harvard Business review article. A strategy map visually represents how the critical elements of an organisation’s strategies are linked together. In an organisation’s strategy execution process, a strategy map complements a performance measurement framework such as the balanced scorecard.

This is a technical paper, which primarily builds on the prior literature on the strategy map design. In particular, this study reviews 41 publications on strategy maps in the period 2000-2015, including observation of 333 strategy map frameworks.

This study develops 14 design principles across seven features of a strategy map framework. This study also identifies a significant lack of empirical research on strategy map design features and principles.

Future research could examine whether and why various design features and principles could exert different or same effects (e.g. decision-relevance).

The developed design features and principles can be used by practitioners as guidance for developing customised strategy maps for their organisations.

This paper contributes to the literature by serving as a “one-stop shop” for both practitioners and researchers seeking a comprehensive understanding of the current state of the strategy map design features and principles.