Balanced scorecard

Abstract

Almost any reader of this book will probably have heard of balanced scorecard (BSC). It is one of the best known among business buzzwords. Search engines like Google yield over seven million entries for the term “balanced scorecard.” Thousands of books and articles mention it, so it cannot be true that there is no reasonable literature about BSC. Indeed, the original articles by Kaplan and Norton published in the Harvard Business Review in 1992 and 1996, respectively, contain much useful information. The same cannot be said about most books and articles published later. By and large, these make the concept too complicated and rarely come to useful conclusions. Furthermore, I have heard many managers talk about balanced scorecard even though they have scant knowledge of what it is. It thus deserves here the attention of an entire chapter.