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The study develops a mathematical model of the firm to derive theoretical foundations for the balanced scorecard concept (BSC). The model is based on several parts which are integrated into a company model. This model includes the demand function, the production function and the objective function of the firm which are depicted by traditional microeconomic concepts. Demand is presented as a function of price and customer relationship management (CRM) costs. Production is assumed to depend on labor, capital, and development and learning (D&L) costs. Simple dynamics is included both in the demand and production function. The strategy of the firm is depicted by the objective function based on profit and net sales. The output variables of the model are classified as the four perspectives of BSC. The effects of the objectives (strategies) on the importance (shadow prices) of the constraints are analysed. It is shown that a change in the objectives may alter the order of their importance. Thus, a change in the strategy should be accompanied with a change in the focus of BSC. Furthermore, non‐financial and financial performance ratios may change in opposite directions, when the strategy is shifted towards revenue maximization. Thus, inconsistencies with the interpretation of cause and effects may emerge, when the strategy is shifted. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the results.

There is a relationship between the organizations’ strategic objectives and their corporate communications. The latter is an important feature of organizational performance. Organizational leaders are continuously facing the challenge of communicating their strategic goals to their stakeholders. Very often, they are adopting performance management tools to meet this challenge. Consequently, this chapter explains that the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) can be used to evaluate and measure the firms’ corporate communications and their organizational performance. This tool has been widely recognized by academics and managers as it is capable of aligning organizational strategies (including their missions and visions), strategic indicators (leading and lagging indicators) and stakeholder management. A review of the relevant literature review suggests that many practitioners are becoming strategic in their corporate communications. In this light, this chapter clarifies that the BSC approach can be used to support them in their stakeholder engagement. This contribution is useful for both academics and practitioners as it aligns the corporate communication practices with organizational strategy and performance management in the digital era.

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC), first introduced by Kaplan and Norton in 1992, is described as a comprehensive performance measurement system as well as a strategic management tool. Over the past decade, the BSC has attracted increasing attention in mainstream management accounting research. A review of the literature identifies five main areas of criticism relating to the BSC. Using particularly Nørreklit’s (2000, 2003) criticisms of the BSC’s assumptions, this research gained views (using both a pilot and follow up survey of New Zealand companies) on the number and titles of perspectives in the BSC; the existence and understanding of cause‐and‐effect relationships; whether or not the BSC was perceived as a strategic control model; the number of performance measures and perceptions of the ability to judge performance based on those measures; and the credibility and effectiveness of the BSC as a management solution. The findings show that the BSC is not used extensively by the firms studied but those that do use it take full advantage of the BSC’s flexibility, using broader perspective names, as needed, to incorporate the desired aspects of organisational performance. There appears to be no concern over whether the cause‐and‐effect relationships meet a set of academic criteria relating to empirical verification and logical independence. However, Nørreklit’s (2000) criticism that the BSC fails to increase strategy awareness finds some support. The findings also contradict the suggestion that the BSC necessitates an excessive number of performance measures which could be detrimental to managerial performance evaluation. Finally, the criticism that the BSC is merely a trend, popularised by management consulting firms, is also not supported.

This paper aims to analyse how the inherent design of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) violates the controllability principle. The management control literature provides convincing examples of actors who breach controllability without intention. This discussion was extended by the example of the BSC. This paper focusses on the breaches that occur when actors lack the awareness or the skills to re-enforce controllability.

Taking a pragmatic-constructivist position, analytical and empirical evidence was included on controllability to analyse the normative literature on the BSC.

It was found that the BSC causes several unintended breaches of the controllability principle at the level of middle managers, both ex ante (control rationale) and ex post (fairness rationale). These breaches are not only situational or induced by how managers in the field design a BSC. They appear to be inherent in the BSC due to the way Kaplan and Norton have conceptualised it.

Practitioners are alerted that the intuitive appeal of popular management fashions such as the BSC covers their conceptual flaws. It was also proposed that failed implementations and dysfunctional applications can be due to the inherent characteristics of the concepts themselves.

This paper contributes by uncovering the unintended violations of the controllability principle by the inherent characteristics. The authors suggest using our conceptual contribution to conduct empirical research on the issues of controllability and management control systems in general. Thereby, the theory-based discussion on the BSC is advanced (Nørreklit, 2000, 2003; Nørreklit et al., 2012a).

The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

This paper aims to review the literature on the balanced scorecard (BSC) system. The BSC may well be one of the most popular performance measurement systems, but this is not synonymous with successful. The inventors of the BSC, Kaplan and Norton, actually emphasize that a BSC can only really impact the organizational performance if it is linked to the actors’ intrinsic and extrinsic incentives. As BSC has existed for more than 20 years, the authors find it relevant to survey the extant literature which elaborates on the BSC-incentives link within organizations.

This paper identifies 117 empirical studies from leading academic journals published between 1992 and 2012 and then assesses 30 of these studies, which present the BSC-compensation link within the BSC literature. The authors analyze both research design (authors’ perspective) and the actual findings in the field (organizations’ perspective).

First, it was found that only 30 of 117 empirical studies have a research design that is comprehensive enough to capture a full BSC as suggested by Kaplan and Norton, and only six of these studies elaborate on the link between the BSC and compensation. Second, extant research lacks valid constructs for the BSC and focuses too much on planning (ex-ante) with the BSC and not sufficiently on evaluation and control (ex-post). Third, the authors demonstrate that empirical BSC literature relies very strongly on field research in small and medium enterprises compared to similar research. Overall, the authors claim that the “relevance” of the BSC remains unproven.

The authors synthesize the empirical BSC literature and derive a future research agenda.

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.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the use of the ad hoc methodology of causal mapping to support the process of quantifying the financial returns related to sustainability investments. The present study uses two methods to build causal maps, that is aggregate and congregate mapping, in order to capture managerial cognition and derive a model that reflects companies’ competitive advantages. The resulting causal map is a prerequisite and serves as a building block for the design of the organisation’s performance management systems for sustainability.

This study relies on qualitative, deductive research undertaken at the leading international pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. This chapter presents the results of a longitudinal study developed through an action research approach conducted at the Company over a four-year period.

This study illustrates how the described approach for developing causal maps can facilitate the elicitation of managerial tacit knowledge and the consequent identification of indicators to quantify the investments in sustainability.

This chapter proves the relevance of causal mapping as a comprehensive, articulated basis for developing and improving organisations’ strategic performance measurement systems (SPMSs).

This study’s main contribution is the triangulation of multiple qualitative methods to enhance the reliability of causal maps. This innovative approach supports the use of causal mapping to extract managerial tacit knowledge in order to identify indicators for the evaluation of investments in sustainability.

This paper presents the results of a survey of the use of the balanced scorecard in New Zealand companies. The top 40 companies on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZSE40) were chosen as the survey population. A 62.5% response rate was achieved. One hundred percent of respondents indicated that they have knowledge of the balanced scorecard. Sixty‐one percent and 65% of the respondents reported that they use a balanced scorecard at organisational and divisional level, respectively. The results indicate that financial performance measures continue to dominate non‐financial measures in terms of importance. In addition to further developing the literature on the balanced scorecard, the research provides opportunities to investigate balanced scorecard implementations in New Zealand in more depth.