Banabakova V. K., Georgiev M. P. Opportunities of application of the balanced scorecard in management and control // International scientific journal "Internauka". - 2017. - №10.
УДК 330
Banabakova V. K.
Professor, Ph.D.
National Military University
Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria
Georgiev M. P.
Ph.D. student
National Military University
Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgariа
OPPORTUNITIES OF APPLICATION OF THE BALANCED SCORECARD IN MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL
Summary: Modern organizations focus on the importance of strategic management and control over current and short-term goals and their corrective role on the strategic success factors of the organization in the process of using the resources of the external environment, ignoring the challenges; as the priorities of the activity are to maximally satisfy public expectations, to minimize the spending of resources, to use its own priorities, to successfully overcome uncertainty and risk, to introduce the adequacy of management decisions against the background of reasonable and measured risk. In the study alternatives are discussed as the Balanced Scorecard model suggested by observations and practice, and implications are provided in regard to changing and improving the architecture of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a tool for management and control in conditions of high variability and uncertainty of the economic and social environment. Examined are some models in place to develop and implement the BSC and on this basis are structured conclusions and recommendations in the following aspects: the organization's strategy, which involves the application of BSC and the inclusion of elements to develop key aspects of the strategy; the potential of the BSC model and its application according to the different needs of management; the needs of the process of developing and implementing BSC and to further expand the applications of the BSC as a strategic management tool requiring an assessment of the expected status and priorities in the control of the indicators included.
Key words: balanced scorecard, management, control, development.
Introduction
One of the features of recent decades is the rapid development of concepts, models and technologies for corporate governance. Particular attention is paid to strategic management. The analysis of the activity of large and medium-size economic units operating without strategic management is a very risky venture. Research in this area has evoked the emergence of new paradigms, concepts and tools. Undoubtedly, assessment is a valuable management practice. One of the roles of measurement, especially in the form of balanced schemes, is to facilitate the verification of the course of action on events in the organization.
The starting point of the balance methods is the understanding that reliance on the financial indicators in the assessment of the achievement of the set goals in the organizations is incorrect. Adapting balance-to-performance analysis to new conditions, apart from paying attention to traditional measures, complements them with new indicators of expected status and development in the future. The basis for this type of analysis is the validation of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) presented in the early 1990s [1].
The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a practical tool to help organizations implement their business strategy. Strategic objectives, criteria and action plans are formulated for each perspective. The continuous process of development of the balanced scorecard is focused on the reconciliation of those perspectives. The card directs the organization's efforts on the critical analysis of the future and its association with the content of the ideal.
The process of introducing BSC into the practice of each organization predisposes establishement and regulation by certain cycles and principles [2]. Through the language of goals and incentives, a connection is created between all hierarchical levels of effective communication. BSC is distinguished by a logically bound and easy to understand architectonics for the essential expression of the adopted strategy. The emphasis in the overall analysis of the BSC model is on the logic of combining different criteria. It also has a retrospective character, because it illustrates the history of the organizational strategy.
The idea of looking at business from the viewpoint of a „card“ is of considerable interest since the introduction of the model in 1992. The reason is that more and more managers find a need for more than mass-applied short-term reports, referring to the development of capabilities needed to the organization which will also be successful in the future, although these changes may deprive them of profits in the current year and lead to increased spending. This is the fundamental reason why companies need the balanced scorecard. This need is even more obvious for non-profit organizations, such as government agencies and non-governmental organizations, and it outlines other legitimate reasons why a balanced system is successful in the world of business and consulting services:
Prerequisites for validating the management model of a balanced scorecard can be addressed in several ways:
Since 1992 until now, the interest in the balanced system of indicators has been steadily increasing. The concept provokes the improvement of many managers. In the BSC, performance criteria are combined with criteria that describe spent resources or activities, and this combination is an incentive, a peculiar driver of work. Well-constructed maps combine several perspectives and elements that are difficult to distinguish. They are tied to a system of goals and means. In this line of thought, it can be argued that the maps largely illustrate the business's ability to rely on assumptions about relationships between the individual coefficients and that these assumptions should be used to accomplish a particular task.
Contemporary requirements of business and social environment call for dynamic organizations with a high degree of autonomy for workers. Traditional financial control is not appropriate for this environment. Not only is the information it provides often obsolete and inaccurate to use as a basis for customer or product solutions. In addition, autonomous employees need goals and initiatives other than usual, based on profit and return on investment, and are modeled on revenue accounting financial reporting. Other landmarks are needed to indicate a way that is compatible with the full foresight or the concept of the business. The whole organization must embrace the unity of strategy and business rules that are based on a consensus among the necessary priorities. For these reasons, the BSC as a system has its place and role. The concept is an assistant in the process of reaching a common view of the business environment in the company. It enriches the management and control toolkit and strengthens them in a strategic direction, rethinking their effectiveness and provoking their improvement in functional terms.
The term „BSC“ includes not only the specific structure for the „card“ itself but also the process of its use. Thus, the concept of the BSC is a component of a well-developed management and control system focused on a strategic perspective and critical response to traditional management and control. Here one can see the connection between Kaplan and Norton's original assumptions of controlling the BSC with similar assumptions and the idea of the company's intellectual capital. In the presence of BSC, financial responsibility and management have been replaced by the richer picture of reality. Not that the monetary criteria have become less important, but also in this connection it is necessary to form a balance in the transition from financial to strategic management of the activity of the organizational activity [26-31].
Evolution of the concept of the Balanced Scorecard
There is а growing criticism of traditional management and control as only justified on financial criteria. The reason for this is that conditions today differ from the conditions at the time when the understanding of the meaning of traditional management and control was established. The strategy that underpins the processes that meet the customer's needs is incompatible with short-term thinking, the result of focusing solely on the financial criteria.
Critical views on classical control are being formed as it generates certain management deficits because:
In the early models, the BSC is considered as a value measurement method. In these cases, it is very difficult to look for serious reasons for the process to be linked to strategy management and control. At this early stage, the development of BSC is tied to concrete initiatives and events, planned and budgetary provision. There is mutual influence between the shape of the BSC and the entire planning process, in particular the budgeting process. It implies a balance between short and long-term planning and an opportunity to set the necessary strategic direction for the efforts of each member of the organization. The BSC often creates occasions for discussions that might not have taken place without it, but are important because of its use. Thus, a document is formally a BSC, but it also contains much more.
The idea goes far beyond just creating an evaluation system. Although there are many views on the BSC, too many other content is also included in this concept. Practice has shown that BSCs have different applications - from budget management to strategy management. They all have a common trait: their emergence in recent years is driven by the need to measure and manage both the efficiency of the activities of the organizations under consideration and far more complex processes such as the implementation of strategies. Underlying the concept of BSC is the idea of forming an innovation system to measure the activities of organizations.
At present, organizations and corporations operate in a new kind of economic environment based on knowledge where it is necessary to manage practically non-measurable activities such as innovation and human capital. Organizations themselves are aware of how new phenomena exist in the new kind of economy, such as people's knowledge, new technologies and software products, corporate culture that fosters innovation. It is reported that organizations do not have the right tools to successfully implement their new strategies and to successfully control them [7].
Based on the examined models of the BSC, the following conclusions could be drawn [8]:
The BSC was originally designed to give managers structured information from performance criteria based on a combination of leading and delayed indicators. But from the moment of its introduction, BSC has gradually evolved from a tool for organizing criteria into a strategic control mechanism. It evolves both in its construction, in the process of creation and in use patterns. This evolution goes through three stages, reaching what is now called the third-generation BSC [8]. Third-generation BSC is a methodology for managing and evaluating the work of organizations on their way to achieving strategic goals. But years of practical experience and scientific work are needed to overcome the shortcomings of the original model, which is most often associated with the failure of the BSC to be an effective tool for corporate governance and control. Typical problems such as lack of ownership of management, monitoring only financial criteria, and the inability to force the management system to develop and improve are already addressed.
The ideas of the third-generation BSCs are based on the following key concepts of business management and strategic development control. The model weight is placed on the following items from the content of organizational management:
A significant breakthrough during the evolution of BSC is the realization that the successful use of this tool is not only dependent on the use of proper methods for selecting the criteria included in it, but also by the fact that organizations are implementing the right management processes that enable it to be effectively used by managers. These statements provoke the development of the BSC as a management and control framework, which proves the hypotheses by taking them out of the following factors:
The last-generation effective BSCs are those developed with the active involvement of the management team that will use them to manage the organization. Essential to success is the application of a technologically sound and appropriate creation process. The use of an „easy” process is recommended, according to which the management team itself defines the "content", which largely implies a positive and timely outcome [9].
The analysis of the evolution of the concept of BSC and the evolution of the concept of strategic management and control clearly reveals similarities in terms of development trends and alternatives for improvement, which lead to the following implications:
First. The BSC model from a value-enhancing organizational performance tool is transformed into a tool for managing and controlling the strategy. In this way, it can be assumed that a kind of expression of the transition in managerial thinking is formed in terms of management control systems in which the financial burden is redirected towards strategic control. Improving the concept of strategic management and control and modeling of its model area has a significant impact in forming a model prototype related to the concept of BSC.
All three models of strategic control have a very strong influence on the first generation BSC. From the three-step model, the principle of linking the environment with the strategy-building process is borrowed. From the process model comes the trend that deepens the development processes of the organization, namely the organizational training as a form of development of the training organization. From the conceptual model, that the control can be realized through criteria and objectives, which are differentiated in the BSC as indicators, summarized in several main areas /perspectives. By examining these concepts and their development, it can be concluded that in the process of mutual influence they aim to improve.
The transition to the second generation of BSC resonates fundamentally and predominantly in the development of the model area of strategic control. The deepening of the strategic orientation on the BSC reveals the emergence of overlapping and generalizing indicators, which in the strategic management and control systems are defined as criteria for the rapid preliminary, respectively the subsequent, reverse control. Here, however, BSCs record a certain priority in the establishment of the strategic relations model.
Second. Developing the idea of the learning organization finds a particularly strong charge in reconciling strategic control concepts and BSC. Though strategic correction models have been marked and corrected by the feedback on the behavior of the organization under review, this process has recorded a deepening in BSCs. As the most organized form of feedback, corrective actions, if necessary, can take the form of seminars to discuss the recorded results and expected changes in organizational behavior. In this case, we can talk about a particular form of organizational self-improvement and training. This deepening trend brings about the creation of sustainable value by the organization, provoking the improvement of the methods of use and mobilization of its intangible assets - human capital, databases and information systems, sensitive high-quality processes, customer and trade relations, for the innovation and highly developed organizational culture. Perhaps this is the most significant evidence of the recent trend of shifting the focus from an economy based on tangible assets to an economy based on intangible assets, knowledge and service.
Third. As the most important moment in the process of analysis on the relationship between the concepts of strategic management and control and of BSC is their reconciliation and the formation of a qualitatively new model. Theories prevailing among the leaders of governance have not created a particularly serious and universal strategic framework. Strategic doctrines are centered on shareholder, customer management, process management, quality, key competencies, innovation, human resources, information technology, organizational structures and training. And while each of the above-mentioned strands is in itself extremely important, none of them provides a thorough and integrated approach to strategy development. Even the theory of M. Porter [10], based on positioning for a competitive advantage, does not provide a comprehensive vision of strategy. It is here that we can speak of a unified, consistent system of realization of management and control over the strategy that results from conceptual eclecticism and model consolidation. This new model, a new strategic framework, exposes in a new way the importance of strategic management and control, based on a system of indicators and a portfolio of perspectives linking efficiency and strategies, between short and long-term results, forming a unity between the present and the future.
These three implications suggest that in the management and consulting practice, the BSC is validated and improving as a tool for strategic management and control. At the last stage of the evolution of the concept, the indicators for measuring the performance of not only the organizational activity, but above all its strategy, are being revolutionized. Along with the imposition of strategic maps as a tool for effective management and precision control, the latest card designs are presented as a brilliant, accurate and holistic method to consolidate the most critical moments in the art of modern governance and the challenges of modern control.
The balanced scorecard – a particular form of management thinking and control
The Balanced Scorecard is a particular form of management thinking and control, implemented through a series of actions. This individuality and uniqueness is predetermined by two components - on the one hand the uniqueness of each organization and its strategy, and on the other specific, specific solutions for management and controlling through certain initiatives and events.
Each organization sets out perspectives, timelines and indicators according to these characteristics when introducing the BSC as a management and a control tool:
In its original form, the BSC model covers four main areas. The first includes finance - it consists of parameters such as: growth, yield, turnover, shareholder value, etc. The second concerns the users - in this segment are introduced measures that provide information about customer satisfaction. The third area concerns internal processes - identifying those processes that maximize added value. And the fourth area is tied to the continuous addition of knowledge and development to the organization.
Today's managers recognize the impact of the criteria on work and strategies. Resulting evaluation should be an integral part of the management process. The Balanced Scorecard gives the administrative staff a detailed structure that transforms the company's strategic goals into a clear set of benchmarks. It is more than an assessment exercise, it is a management system that can motivate serious improvements in such critical areas as product, process, customer and market development [11].
The BSC gives the managers different perspectives from which to choose criteria. It complements the usual financial metrics with work, customer, internal processes, and refining and optimization activities. These criteria differ from traditional ones. It is clear that many companies already have a sufficiently large set of physical and operational criteria for their activities. But these criteria are directed downwards from the strategy to the particular operation and are tailored to the specifics of these processes. On the other hand, the criteria of the BSC are set in the strategic goals and competitive needs of the organization. By driving managers to select a limited number of critical metrics from any perspective, the BSC accelerates the ability to specify strategy, mission and vision [8].
Moreover, while traditional financial criteria show what happened over the past period, without showing how managers can improve their performance over the next, the BSC is also a cornerstone of the company's current and future success. Furthermore, unlike conventional measures, information from perspectives provides a balance between external criteria such as operating income and internal criteria such as developing a new product. This balanced set of criteria reveals that the replacements that managers have already made between the activity criteria encourage them to achieve their goals in the future without replacing key success factors.
The BSC is the language, the control point of the background, on which all new projects and types of business are evaluated. It is not a template that can be applied to a variety of business or industry. Different market situations, product strategies and competitive environment require the use of appropriate specimens [12]. The success story of is in its transparency, allowing the observer to understand the chosen competitive strategy through a criterion system.
The above discussion is a good reason to make the following considerations:
The BSC as a tool for strategic management and control
The very first reflections on the concept of the BSC prove that the organization can be seen from concrete perspectives, as the BSC model achieves the most tight link between the short-term operational control and the long-term strategy [13]. In this way, the company focuses on a set of critical key ratios that reflect the state and trends in certain planned areas. In other words, the company is forced to control and analyze day-to-day operations as they affect the long-term development, including its strategic prospects. Consequently, the concept of the BSC contains three time dimensions, analyzing registered results, regulating current activity and focusing in the future.
The BSC is a method of reaching agreement and realizing control over where an organization follows its strategy. In business and the public sector, key indicators can be found in abundance. The difference is in focusing on a deliberately chosen set of criteria - little enough to be observed - and on their use to achieve and share a common view of the organization's strategy for its future development. The agreed set of criteria, formed on the basis of a necessary, reasonable balance, reflects the strategic choice of the organization.
The selected criteria can be seen as a complement to financial control and as a means to reduce the risk of a harmful short-term approach, while giving a clear idea to the employees of the organization about their work, and expectations about the company's future. Some scientists talk about changing the approach from financial to strategic control [14], i.e. from a specific direction in the management, to change the focus of attention to the overall organizational strategy. The question really concerns the essence of the economy more than the monetary method. A good economy means good resource management.
Modern organizations are much more than a skillful investment of capital. It is important for each leading manager how to manage talent, market position and accumulated knowledge. The perfection of a simple concept predetermines the universal nature of the BSC model and its wide perimeter of application, promptly demonstrating the tangible and intangible benefits of reconciling financial and non-financial criteria.
In most organizations, processes of strategic planning and operational funding exist independently of each other and involve separate organizational structures. The process of strategic planning is permanent, defining long-term plans, goals and strategic initiatives, usually taking place by deepening substantial trends registered on an annual basis. On the same basis, it is endorsed by senior management and the organization's budget. It consists almost entirely of numerical financial indicators, which usually mark the link between the strategic plan and the organizational goals. If an organization wants to establish a link between its actions and strategy, strategic and planning should be linked to operational funding. Strategic targeting processes express the business unit's drive to achieve excellent results on strategic indicators of the prospects shaping its BSC. Resources are being used and initiatives are being implemented to ignore the differences between the current state and indirect goals for a prolonged future period [15].
One of the most significant alternatives for genuinely controlling the validity of strategies and the effectiveness of strategic planning is the formulation of specific short-term goals on the parameters that form the BSC. The intermediate controls in question are a real expression of the senior executive's performance on the pace and outcomes of ongoing programs and strategic indicators initiatives. Such detailed short-term financial planning is important, but the budgeting process should also include expected performance from other areas involved in structuring the BSC. This means that the executive management should provide, as part of integrated planning and budgeting, short-term monthly or quarterly performance and performance indicators for its users, innovative and operational processes, and the process of synchronization between employees, systems and organization . These key milestones in the planning for the next year express the expectations for short-term achievements over the long-term road to realizing the strategy chosen by the organization. If the long-term plan definition process is properly implemented, the short-term budgeting process will consist of bringing the first year of the multiannual plan into current budgets for the objectives and indicators across all BSC lines.
Considering the necessary strategic / budget reference, a new direction is emerging to improve the BSC model. In this process, two management problems are simultaneously implemented:
In this line of thought, the relationship between strategy and budget, strategic planning and budgeting is a procedure underlying the effective analysis and detailing to implement the smooth transition from a high-level strategy to the creation of a budget for the implementation of the current activity. The strategy sets the organizational development line for the 3-5 year period in its implementation, while the annual budget provides the first year of this process and marks the links between current and strategic goals.
The current and effective management and control model of BSC has identified certain gaps and problems, the solution of which is the path to its improvement and enrichment in a meaningful and functional aspect. Is it possible to formulate model strategic goals of the organization, control strategic and development, engage all personnel and all that leads to success and stable development? BSC is the modern management and control model through which this task can be realized. Along with the Balanced Scorecard, it is possible to conduct flexible and effective management and strategic controls using not many but relevant indicators.
As a starting point for effective governance and control, there is a balanced reconciliation of various indicators necessary to reflect the organization's activity and the construction of a logical system such as BSC based on proven causality. The realization of this process and its specificity are accompanied by specific issues, whose analysis and solutions are an alternative for improving the BSC as a model for real control. Everyone who knows the life of the organization knows that there are a number of control systems that affect its day-to-day operations. However, there is no systematic understanding of why and how these systems are used as a means of achieving certain programs [16].
By organizing their management system based on the structure of the BSC, managers can achieve their most important objective - bringing the strategy into operation and controlling it. When organizations make the crucial transition to turning their strategic vision into action, they realize the true upsurge and take real advantage of developing and implementing strategically BSCs. The results of the initially developed BSC always lead to a series of management processes that mobilize and reorient organizational efforts. The development of the original BSC in an organization is achieved on the basis of systematic consensus-building processes and clarifying how the mission and strategy can be brought into a system of working objectives and indicators.
As a result of an in-depth study of good practice among organizations that have embedded and using BSCs, there could be drawn a model of five principles that organizations could follow in transforming their strategy into concrete actions and implementing real, strategic control [17].
The first principle claims that change should begin at the highest level. The idea is that senior management initiates the implementation of the strategy, firstly fixing the organization's vision and goals, demonstrating personal interest and engaging staff awareness with the upcoming change.
The second principle considers that the strategy needs to be translated, that is, detailed, bound by deadlines and operational plans. BSCs are being modeled at this stage to analyze the links between the different elements of the strategy, to formulate objectives and their measures, and to identify strategic initiatives.
The third principle is justified by the need for the organization to be able to implement and implement the corporate strategy. At this point, it is imperative to develop BSCs with indicators for lower business units /departments, workshops, to identify opportunities for synergy in order to achieve maximum added value.
The fourth principle identifies the need for the strategy to become an essential part of the work of each employee in the organization. This is a difficult process due to the fact that it is related to the development of individual BSCs that contain individual goals and consider the relationship between each employee's personal contribution to implementing the company's strategy. Here, it should be noted that the practical application of BSCs as a form of individual development and control makes sense and a logical explanation especially for key individual positions /consultants, representatives, etc./ where their activities have a significant impact on organizational efficiency, which causes the application of BSC to be financially secured and objectively necessary. An essential point here is to find the intersection between individual and corporate values. Success at this stage is crucial because, although the strategy is formulated by the management, its implementation depends on the staff working in the organization. By aligning and consolidating goals and incentives at an individual level with those of the organization, effective communications transparency and maximum management and control performance are achieved.
The fifth principle has a generalizing character, imperiously pointing out that the strategy must become a continuous and permanently improving process. It is at this point that different practices are being developed in relation to resource management, the process of training organization, and the updating of initiatives and control measures [18].
Problems in the application of BSC as a modern tool of management and control
The problems that can be committed to the implementation of measurement and control of the activity through the BSC and its application as a modern management and control tool are determined by the specifics of the particular organization under consideration, the sphere/branch in which the potential of human resources is realized. Building on the accumulated experience and shared experience in designing and implementing BSC, several issues arise:
The introduction of each indicator in the BSC process is related to a specific expedience and a system of actions controlled by a delegated, responsible team. In addition, the content of the specific indicator is also linked to the incentive and remuneration system, which forms a high responsibility and serious motivation. It is on the basis of this logic that control measures are formed.
In the course of continuous monitoring in the work with the BSC, the accent is on the recording of deviations from the adopted standards and imposed norms. Early diagnosis of these deviations signaled the emergence of new trends generating new ideas for improvement of the values for the given indicator, and hence from the perspective of the BSC.
Depending on the severity of the different sensitivity, a part of the indicators can be classified as outperforming and the rest as lagging indicators (with a generic, resultant character). In particular, the balance between the different types of information provides the development of the BSC as a process.
Regarding the perspectives and their intermediate role as a constructive element of the BSC control system, the functionality of the relations between the composite indicators and the relations with the other perspectives is important. The functionality of the links between the indicators in the perspective itself determines the perspective of the process of modeling the card itself. Due to the fact that the validity of the information provided in different indicators is different, sometimes their relationship with other indicators becomes incompatible and the registered trends are invalid. The interrelationship between prospects, resting on significant correlations between their indicators, forms the balanced character of the BSC and reveals the opportunitie for efficiency control.
The above-discussed problems provoke the development and improvement of BSC as a management and control tool in several directions:
First. In terms of content, the individuality and uniqueness of each organization under consideration predetermines the construction of a particular BSC with a strictly individual set of perspectives and indicators. As a critical remark on the BSC, a number of consultants mention that it has two disadvantages, although both can be overcome relatively easily. The first is related to the perspective of customers, which implies ignoring the broader market outlook. It's important not how the business looks in the eyes of customers, but how it looks against the background of competition. The second and most significant flaw is that no suppliers are taken into account. It is believed that if business improves itself, everything will be fine, but nowadays, when there is a growing resource depletion, the interdependence between activities is continually deepening, especially in the area of production. It is this fact that increases the need to introduce new sets of indicators that create new perspectives. The high dynamics and the huge amount of information on the creation and functioning of each outlook predetermines the use of indicators with a partial resultant character. The recording of specific development trends in causal relationships between indicators in a single perspective can form a database for differentiation and indicators of a complex nature.
Second. There is also a special topicality among the analyzed problems and the involvement of the BSC control projects with the creation of software products. The first software systems start with a high value of these elements of the content information that can link the data to the criteria. Using modern systems they can facilitate timely diagnosis and intervention in response to observed processes, increasing the ability to store and work with these features as a database. This is the main feature of leading balanced scorecard software systems. Here the refinement can be done to maximize adaptation of the specific product and its version to the individual specifics of each organization. As a disadvantage of the software product range, it is possible to register the ignorance of the subjective factor in the implementation of control and corrections on the activity, due to the fact that besides the given parameters in each individual solution there is a combination of managerial flair and subjectivism.
Over the years, since the balanced card exists, ин its physical structure, its use, and the process of its creation as a tool for management and control in organizations, many changes have been made. This evolution, at least as far as the parameters mentioned above, is largely due to empirical evidence, drawn mainly from observations of weaknesses in the process of creation, rather than the structure of the original idea. The need for a process of creation that makes a more appropriate selection of criteria and part of the collective view of the management team is causing major changes that are being made in the second and third generation of BSC. But while empirical developments remain at the edges of the evolution of the BSC, some aspects of the evolutionary rationale correspond to existing academic perceptions related to organizational management and strategic thinking and control [17].
Combining developments on the principles of the BSC and the theoretical aspects of control and management processes is a positive indicator that the more recent ideas of the process of creating a balanced map and its structure are really "better" than the original concept of Kaplan and Norton insofar as they are more likely to have a beneficial impact on the organizations that use them. Although modern BSCs are much better than the original ones, there is still room for improvement in potential areas for further clarification of topics for future development and research:
The evolution in the model field of certain rational models and their reconciliation with alternatives and concrete solutions to problems provide real grounds for considering that the perimeter and the high efficiency of the management and, above all, the control (including the exercises on the strategies) rates of transformation and improvement and their potential is becoming more and more important.
The idea and conceptual features of the BSC imply the creation of certain conditions and the definition of organizational and institutional prerequisites in order to proceed with the design of such a management model. The goal set for materialization through the BSC methodology predetermines some form, structure, and content. It is for this reason that every detail (element) of the structure proves that its content determines the selected formal expression. Referring to the principles of constructiveness, continuity and systemic logic, indicator-criteria-perspective-card makes the BSC model into a constantly evolving process and transforms the organization itself or a system in which it flows as a self-improving structure, regardless of scale.
The review of design and commissioning technology form and imply the understanding that more commonly used BSCs are inherently a macroeconomic model for organizational development. The rationale for this can be found in the key presence and role of the principle of imparting quantitative characteristics and setting time boundaries to the tasks that are mainly directed at the implementation of strategic models of thinking and behavior. Resting on this logical line, the technology of creating and introducing by its nature and content is a process of continuous adaptation of the organization or the system to the changing conditions of the social environment and the stated expectations of society.
Finding a conceptual similarity and proximity between the strategic management and control and the BSC is grounded in two key trends that change the understanding of modern and effective governance. One - focusing on strategic development perspectives, and the other - developing and improving intangible factors for organizational success.
Forming an assessment and creating conditions for ongoing and systematic monitoring would provide the entire institutional system with clarity and transparency not only for the growing role of strategies and intangible assets in the present day but would give a realistic picture of the financial implications of all activities, and the control would thus be far more effective.
Applications of the Balanced Scorecard concept in relation to social development
The successful social development is a result of an effective governance and control. This requires all operating organizations to continuously improve their measurement systems. The main message to those responsible for the development, improvement and implementation of these systems from the outset of the process is the identification of the role of the performance measurement system for the activity itself. The creators of these performance measurement systems and measurement methods are actually looking for sophisticated ways to reconcile work-based behavior in the particular organization with its overall strategic goals. In this context, the measurement allows managers to determine whether the planned events are being implemented in practice, whether the activity is improving and, if so, whether the organizational activity is secure for a long period of time.
Nowadays, managers from all sectors of the social system on a global scale face the dual challenge of how to mobilize their human capital and information resources and how to transform their organizations towards new strategies in line with the high requirements of their informed and demanding users and customers. Institutions and organizations generally respond to this challenge by formulating new strategies and redirecting, through declaring new inspirational missions and concepts, to delivering increased value to their clients and partners. But the major problem they all face is their inability to successfully implement their new strategies due to management difficulties and the resulting control over the measurement process and strategic development based primarily on intangible assets .
The data obtained from the system for measuring the indicators enables the organization's strategy and the principles of its practical activity to be adjusted, as well as the feasibility of the measurement model. However, looking at just one indicator can not give an accurate idea of the status of any system, whether it be a business or a non-profit structure. The need for a balanced set of measures is becoming increasingly important, both in terms of efficiency and strategy.