BEST OF HBR
Using the Balanced
Scorecard as a Strategic
Management System by Robert S. Kaplan and David P Norton
.
•
Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article:
1 Article Summary
The Idea in Brief—the core idea
The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work
2 Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System
14 Further Reading
A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further exploration of the article’s ideas and applications
Reprint R0707M
This document is authorized for use only in Strategy, MBA (B) by Olaf Groth at Hult International Business School from November 2013 to August 2014.
BEST OF HBR
Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic
Management System
The Idea in Brief
The Idea in Practice
Why do budgets often bear little direct relation to a company’s long-term strategic objectives? Because they don’t take enough into consideration. A balanced scorecard augments traditional financial measures with benchmarks for performance in three key nonfinancial areas:
The balanced scorecard relies on four processes to bind short-term activities to long-term objectives: • a company’s relationship with its customers • its key internal processes
• its learning and growth.
COPYRIGHT © 2005 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
When performance measures for these areas are added to the financial metrics, the result is not only a broader perspective on the company’s health and activities, it’s also a powerful organizing framework. A sophisticated instrument panel for coordinating and fine-tuning a company’s operations and businesses so that all activities are aligned with its strategy.
identify the most influential “drivers” of the desired outcomes and then set milestones for gauging the progress they make with these drivers.
1. TRANSLATING THE VISION.
By relying on measurement, the scorecard
forces