The Balanced Scorecard - A Road to Success



The Balanced Scorecard - A Road to Success

Introduction

Robert S. Kaplan is not a new name in the world of management sciences. He is an exuberant Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development and has been serving at the Harvard Business School located at Emeritus. He had started his academic career from the platform of HBS faculty in 1984. Prior to join the HBS, he had served around 16 years of his life at Carnegie-Mellon University as part of the business school. Although, despite his management sciences career, he has attained a B.S. and M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the world-known MIT and after that received a Ph.D. in the field of Operations Research. His educational career is quite vast just like the publication that he had published by and again.

His field of work comprises of various horizon some of which include the executive educational teaching, consultation on various performance and cost related issue along with managing the systems for strategy implementation. However, his study is solely focused on two broad horizons comprising of managing and measuring the organizational risk along with the profound joint venture done with another renowned figure in the management world, Michael Porter. They both have conducted a research on the measurement of cost incurred on the healthcare domain, and then they linked it the cost incurred by patients with various outcomes (Hbs.edu, 1984).

Although, he had published a number of books and research articles but as per the requirement of assignment we are going to discuss the core principles, philosophies and themes defined in his widely known book, “The Strategy-Focused Organization - The Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment”. The book is published due to overwhelming increase in the importance of strategic management and incorporation of competitor's markets. Moreover, the book is highly focused on the significant influence of those competitive forces on the dynamics of the firm. It is also targeting the cost saving and financial enhancement schemes for companies. The book has also unveiled the themes and philosophies which are used to enhance the incorporation of balanced scorecard method in every field of life (Gabor, G., 2001).

Discussion

Book - Strategic themes and Philosophy of BSC

The book is written by two authors first one is Robert S. Kaplan and the another one are David P. Norton. Moreover, this book is best for the various higher management officials, human resource managers, internal auditors and other managers alike Through the use of its book one can easily get along with the balanced scorecard model which is based on the five pillars essential for building up an effective strategy of the strategic focused organization. These key principles include; the translation of the strategy to make it sound with the operational term; alignment of the organization as per the strategy; making the strategy, which can be followed by everyone as every day's job; founding the strategy on the basis on continuous process and finally mobilizing the changes using ...