Balanced Scorecard

The concept of the balanced scorecard emerged in the early 1990s and advanced the view that simple financial or economic measures of organisational performance were inadequate to measure an organisation’s success. Four perspectives were originally proposed, each of which being a separate dimension against which an organisation might measure its ‘performance’. The perspectives were financial, customer, internal business processes and learning and growth. The diversity of perspectives reflects the fact that an organisation’s success in realising its strategy cannot be measured solely in terms of shareholders or financial measures of performance. The ‘balance’ refers to the measurement of an organisation’s success from a number of other perspectives, including staff and customers. See also Corporate Social Responsibility.