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The Leading Organizations Use Performance Measurement

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The leading organizations use performance measurement with the aim of gaining insights to their organizations and the efficiency of their people, programs and processes. The organizations do not only collect and analyze data but they also use performance management to transform various strategies into actions and to improve their operational processes (Northcott and Ma 'amora Taulapapa 2012). Accordingly, performance management is used to manage the organizations. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a prominent performance management system in the contemporary world and it was developed by Dr. David Norton and Dr. Robert Kaplan at Harvard business school. Compared to other systems of measuring performance, the BSC considers various …show more content…

More importantly, the BSC helps in motivating and educating the employees (Qin, Atkins and Yu 2013). This essay critically evaluates the use of the balanced scorecard (BSC) as a performance measurement tool.

It is widely accepted that Norton and Kaplan of the Harvard Business School created the BSC. However, there is a twist in the history of the BSC because some sources claim that Art Schneiderman created the very first BSC in 1987 (Qin, Atkins and Yu 2013). In 1990, Art Schneiderman took part in research that was spearheaded by Dr. Robert S. Kaplan and that is when he described his findings of the BSC. Subsequently, Dr. Norton and Dr. Kaplan included Art’s details in the article about the Balanced Scorecard in 1992. Despite the fact that there were many articles that were published in 1992, the article published by Dr. Norton and Dr. Kaplan was very successful and this led to the publication of another article on the BSC in 1993 (Kristensen, Andersen and Torp 2013). The balanced scorecard was described in the articles and the journals that were written by the two doctors. Later on, Norton and Kaplan conducted a study on the BSC and the study involved 12 companies. Accordingly, the BSC became Norton and Kaplan’s BSC and that is why they are recognized as the original creators of the BSC. The American Accounting Association awarded the BSC the prize of the “best theoretical contribution in 1997”. After the award, the BSC rose

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