留学生企业战略绩效管理作业定制，平衡计分卡是一种战略绩效管理工具（Kaplan和Norton，1992），它等于一个企业绩效评价体系。它在不同的层次分解企业战略目标，转化为具体的绩效评价指标体系去平衡它们，并评估在不同时期对这些指标的实现状况。 BSC四个维度评估对企业的业绩：财务角度，顾客角度，从内部看，创新与学习角度。 BSC也是企业战略管理系统。 BSC解释各种指标衡量企业的战略目标，然后在管理和不同层次的员工将有一个明确的发展战略的认同。这是一个执行策略和管理工具类。 Assignment Question

Critically asses the applicability of a balanced scorecard approach to both a private sector and public sector organisation, using relevant examples to illustrate your points. Evaluate the challenges that may be faced in implementing this approach.

1. Introduction
In 1992, Kaplan and Norton published The Balanced Scorecard-----Measures That Drive Performance on Harvard Business Review, the concept of Balanced Scorecard (BSC) was brought up officially, and which was remedied for many times afterwards.

The balanced scorecard is a strategic performance management tool (Kaplan and Norton, 1992) which equals to a system of enterprise performance evaluation. It decomposes enterprise strategic objectives on different levels, transforms them into specific balanced performance evaluation index systems, and evaluates the realization status of these indexes in different periods. BSC evaluates enterprise performance on four dimensions: Financial perspective, Customer perspective, Internal perspective, Innovation and Learning perspective. BSC is also a system of enterprise strategic management. BSC explains enterprise strategic objectives in all kinds of measurable indexes, and then the management and staff of different levels will have a clear recognition on the development strategies. This is a kind of operative strategy and administrative tool.

Aiming at long-term and better development, modern enterprises must create value for customers, employees, the community and even the whole society, pay attention to factors influencing corporate operation and performance in the long run, such as customer satisfaction, staff quality, social recognition, organization information system, and trim related process factors. BSC exactly meets this value demand, offers corporations a framework and feasible operation approach to help them realize such kind of value balance and development.

The great success BSC won in corporate performance management got close attention from many government institutions and public departments, and people began to bring BSC in these institutions to strengthen management. The sense of duty, strategy guide, terminal guide, responsibility and the openness, etc embodied in public department performance management all challenged traditional management concepts and modes, as the realization of these objectives are all beyond traditional modes. How to use the new performance management theories and techniques to realize the above values has become an important topic of public department at present. No doubt that the theories and modes of BSC are to be a good try.#p#分页标题#e#

2. The application of BSC in private sectors
The basic idea of BSC is to demonstrate the strategic track of the organization through the mutual driven cause and effect relationship between the four dimensional indexes of finance, customers, internal, innovation and learning, realize performance evaluation, evaluate post realized events and make improvement. BSC keeps the traditional financial index. However, a single financial index is not enough to evaluate the ability enterprises create values of the future through investment on customers, providers, staff, production procedures, techniques and innovation. At the time of showing concern for financial performance, BSC pays more attention to the long-term value of the enterprise and driven factors of competition performance. By using BSC, the ways enterprises create values for current and future customers, establish and improve internal productivity and invest on staff to improve future operation can all be evaluated. BSC enables the organization to track the financial results while pay close attention to intangible assets which can make enterprises improve their competency and get future development potentiality. The four dimensions of BSC are not separated, but closely related as a whole. They stand for the balance of interests between the major stakeholders of the enterprise: shareholders, customers, employees, etc.

Advantages of BSC
1) BSC can evaluate the formation process of indexes through evaluating non-financial indexes, find problems in the formation process timely and implement concurrent control, thus playing a warning role. Most of traditional performance management instruments can evaluate financial indexes, but can’t make adjustments on the going process.

2) Guided by strategies, besides performance evaluation, BSC has another important function, that is, strategic management. Traditional performance management instruments don’t possess the function of strategic management as they don’t take corporate strategies into consideration.

3) Seeing from the modes of management and evaluation objectives, BSC focuses on the evaluation and management of corporate daily activities, aiming at improving and promoting the performance of the enterprise and the staff. BSC improves the performance and operation through evaluation. It is not an aim but a device. However, traditional performance evaluation management instruments implement evaluation for the sake of evaluation.

4) BSC can be used to evaluate the value creating ability of intangible assets. In information age, intangible assets are the source of organizing core competence, and must be evaluated and assessed. Traditional performance management instruments only assess the value creating ability of tangible assets.

5) Enterprises are facing a dynamic environment. In the age of knowledge economy, the technique and management evolution of enterprises is much faster than before. Through organic and dynamic management, BSC can adapt to the changing environment.#p#分页标题#e#

BSC and strategic management—strategic map
The process of strategic management mainly refers to the process of strategy formulation and implementation, which can be divided into four phases: strategy analysis, strategy choice, strategy implementation and strategy evaluation. BSC plays an important role in strategy evaluation. Strategy map induces different events into cause and effect chains, and connects the expected results and the driven factors. It describes the strategic objectives, performance evaluation indexes and the relationship between them. Strategy map makes the staff knows how their work is connected to the overall objective of the enterprise so that they will cooperate and work hard to realize the settled goal of the enterprise. The strategy map demonstrates how the organization transforms its activities and resources—including intangible assets such as corporate culture and staff knowledge into concrete gains. The strategy map is shown as follow.

BSC Strategy Map
Corporate strategy objectives

Financial Perspective 

Customer
Perspective 

Internal Perspective 

Innovation and Learning Perspective 

Source: Kaplan, David Norton. ( 2004) How strategy maps frame an organization’s objectives．Financial Executive, (3-4): 63-89

The application of BSC in USM&R
USM&R is fifth largest refinery in America. It takes up 7% of the market share in petrol selling, and 12% of the market share in lube oil selling of America. In the early times of 20 century, USM&R is facing the status of severer competition and insufficient investment. In 1992, USM&R was in a very difficult situation, and its profitability went down to the last but one in the 13 corporations of the same kind in the USA. A survey in 1993 showed that the stuff believed that internal relationship, management process and policies of the higher level all restrain innovation, and the corporation is against its customers. People are pursuing personal achievements and business achievements in their own departments in a very narrow way.

In the middle of 1993, accountants in USM&R advised to bring in BSC. In the beginning of 1994, the high level of USM&R ratified the project of BSC. They engaged Revival Solution Consulting Corporation to help them with the event, and this corporation was set up by Norton, one of the founders of BSC. The establishment of BSC in USM&R was shown as follows:

On the financial perspective
The highest strategic objective on the financial level in USM&R is to raise its return on invested capital from 7% to 12% in three years. To reach this goal, USM&R adopts two important strategic themes: the improvement of productivity and the increase in marketing income.

On the customer perspective
According to its knowledge about customers’ needs, USM&R believes that “timely and friendly” service must be offered to customers. Therefore, distributors must be very important in the application of strategies in USM&R. USM&R make “the win-win relationship between development and distributors” one of its strategic objectives on the customer level, and make “a happy shopping tour for target customers” another one of its strategic objectives.#p#分页标题#e#

On the internal perspective
After clearly defining the achievements on financial and customer level, UMS&R connects the two important points in its internal process with its objectives on customer level:
1) To develop new products and service;
2) To increase the distributors’ income through non-oil marketing.

On Innovation and learning perspective
The strategic objectives on this level are actually the basis of realizing strategies, which are to train highly qualified and motivated employees, and cultivate appropriate information system. The project team defined three strategic objectives on Innovation and learning level: the comprehensiveness of the organization, the core competence of employees and the obtaining of techniques and strategic information. At the same time, the project team also takes the internal atmosphere, strategic employee skills and strategic information completion rate as corresponding measure indexes.

Since the application of new strategies and BSC, USM&R has changed dramatically. According to the report of the company between 1994 and 1998, net cash flow raised from 500 million dollars each year to 7 million dollars each year, the cost of refining, marketing and petrol carriage went down by 20%, its profitability leaped to the number one in its industry between 1995 and 1998 from the last but one in 1992, the production wastage rate went down by 70%, accident rate concerning safety went down by 80%, accident rate concerning environment went down by 63%, and at the same time, product quality was raised, customer service was speeded, customer satisfaction was strengthened, the training of distributors was enhanced, the service of distributors was improved and staff’s interpretation on the corporation’s strategies is also deepened year by year.

3. The application of BSC in public sectors
The key of BSC is to pursue a delicate balance between some important management variables, such as the long-term and short term goal of the organization, terminal objectives and transitional objectives, leading indicators and lagging Indicators, organization performance and individual performance, external concern and internal needs, a balance between past operation result evaluation and future performance evaluation, a balance between external organization satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and a balance between internal operation process, incentive system, knowledge learning of employees and improvement of products and services. It is crucial for modern organizations to pursue such kinds of balance. It is even more important for governments and other public organizations to emphasis a balance between varied values, duties and organization strategies.

The application of BSC of Charlotte government
Many of American governments are also applying BSC, and Charlotte government is one of the earliest governments applying BSC. When applying BSC, Charlotte government made five strategic themes based on the reality—“community security, the city of city, transportation of the city, city and government rebuilding and economy development”. Circling these themes, they set up assessment objectives from four dimensions: customer, financial status, internal operation and learning and development.#p#分页标题#e#

In the dimension of customer, crimes will be reduced, security will be strengthened, neighbor relationship, service, transportation and tax level will be improved, and economy development opportunities will be offered. In the dimension of finance, profitability will be improved, cost will be reduced, the base number of tax will be enlarged, the source of income will be guaranteed, and the AAA credit standard will be sustained. In the dimension of internal operation, solutions to problems of community autonomy will be popularized, the productivity of the government will be improved, the bond with the public will be strengthened, and infrastructure building will be enhanced. In the dimension of learning and development, management and consultation will be improved, government culture will be rebuilt, and skills of work will be promoted. BSC of the city belongs to no department, but is related to all departments. On such condition, all departments closely combine the strategic themes, break the restraints of their functions, and establish their own BSC. In this way, a complete BSC system from the government to different departments is built. It is practically proved that the application of BSC of Charlotte government is a success. BSC changed the situation of citizens and enterprises moving out, the tax base going down and tax source being insufficient, improved living environment of the public and realized the strategies of the city.

The application of BSC in Charlotte is a great success. First, customers should be put in the first place, financial objectives should be seen as the driven goals instead of the highest goals, and the status and advantages of organization performance not directly shown in and depended on “financial status” of the organization should be emphasized. Second, the sustainable development ability and potential value creating ability of the organization should be attached with great importance, and the balance between short-term and long-term performance, competition and cooperation, development and steadiness of the government should be taken into consideration when designing performance index system. Last, BSC system places development in the center, transforms strategic objectives into performance evaluation indexes, and combines the behaviors of the organization and its staff with these objectives through specific system design to realize the strategic objectives of the organization and improve organization performance.

4. The disadvantages of BSC and its challenges
Traditional BSC has some disadvantages. First, as it cannot clearly state the factors influencing corporate system improvement, it cannot find factors influencing corporate performance accurately in analysis and evaluation, thus unfavorable for the application of performance evaluation improvement in the next step. Second, stakeholders are not paid enough attention to. Although Kaplan and Norton http://www.ukthesis.org/thesis_sample/guanlileizuoye/#p#分页标题#e#also emphasize the great importance of attention on stakeholders meaning to the survival and development of the enterprise, with the strategy guide of the enterprise, the analysis and evaluation on safeguarding and satisfying different needs of corporate interest’s subjects are still not complete yet.

Besides, with the quickening of marketization and deepening of corporate system building, enterprises in modern sense are much different from enterprises in traditional sense, and raise higher and higher demands of BSC. At the same time of pursuing economic interest, enterprises are bound to cause burden to the society. Enterprise organizations exist in social organizations, and the society serves as the source of corporate interest. Only if enterprises fulfill their social duties can they create good environment for their development. To strengthen the environment protection awareness, the social responsibilities of enterprises should be labeled as the content of the evaluation. Corporations leading the market in the future will be those leading in social responsibility, environment protection as well as business activities.

留学生企业战略绩效管理作业定制，平衡计分卡是一种战略绩效管理工具（Kaplan和Norton，1992），它等于一个企业绩效评价体系。

BIBLIOGRAPHY

City of Charlotte: Strategic Planning Handbook -2004. Retrieved July 2010 from:

Kaplan, David Norton. (1992) The Balanced Scorecard-----Measures That Drive
Performance．Harvard Business Review, (1-2): 71-79

Kaplan, David Norton. (2004) Plotting Success With Strategy Maps．Optimise, (2):
89-104

Kaplan, David Norton. ( 2004) How strategy maps frame an organization’s
objectives．Financial Executive, (3-4): 63-89

Maisel, L.S. (1992) “Performance measurement: the balanced scorecard approach”,
Journal of Cost Management, Vol. 6 No. 2 , pp. 47-52.

Mobil USM&R(A): Liking the Balanced Scorecard. Retrieved July 2010 from: