The Concept and Use of the Balanced Scorecard in a Competitive Environment

Prior to the introduction of the balanced scorecard (BSC), academics and professionals have criticized the practice of traditional measures, such as profits, ex-post costs, and return on investment as unsatisfactory for decision making in an organizational environment. Also, Martello, Watson, and Fischer (2016) denoted that strategic planning process has been advanced and applied successfully by many businesses, non-profit organizations, and governmental entities. However, the strategic process has been complicated by a rapidly changing environment, such as the impact of globalization, electronic commerce, workforce diversification, government regulations, learning organization, technological advancements, environmental factors, and stiffer competition. Arguably, depending only on current financial measures of performance does not reflect the position of present resource decisions for future financial enactment. Since the 1980s, academics and professionals like Johnson and Kaplan (1987), Cross and Lynch (1988), Dixon, Nanni, and Vollman (1990), and Rappaport (1999) have been working on literature recommending more non-financial measures for evaluating and managing organizations