The Use of the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management Accounting Tool

Abstract

The balanced scorecard was developed in the early 1990s in the course of a year-long project involving 12 companies known for their benchmark performance management and was officially presented in the Harvard Business Review immediately thereafter in an article by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. The thesis discusses the context in which the tool was conceived to enable companies operating in today’s highly competitive markets to successfully incorporate the exploitation and management of their intangible assets together with the traditional methods used up to then so as to fuel the future financial performance of the organization. After conducting an analysis of the constituent components of the scorecard and its complementary strategy map and providing examples of the flexibility of its implementation, the thesis deals with the continual improvements made in the course of the last 30 years. Finally, the results of a self-produced detailed survey are given, in which 30 firms operating in the north-east of Italy answered questions regarding the extent of their knowledge of the balanced scorecard and its effectiveness, as well as the motivations behind their decision to adopt it or not.