The Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management Support Tool - Case Study Example

The paper “The Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management Support Tool” is an excellent example of the case study on management. Strategy in the past had been looked at as an analytical problem that needed to be solved. This perception of things combined with the high stakes managers had for their strategies put in place led to an era of specialists such as MBA’s and consultancy firms that joined the field with frameworks and techniques aimed to help managers to analyze their strategies to give their firms a better strategic advantage. This was some 25 years ago. (Cynthia, 2008).

This paper is aimed at evaluating the Balance Score Card (BSC) as a strategic management tool. To achieve this evaluation, the paper starts by presenting the BSC and goes through all the four perspectives of it, then tries to show how all the four facets of the BSC can be put together using the financial industry, which of course can be translated to other industries. In the second part of this paper, strategic management is looked at and a careful comparison of BSC and strategic management will be made to best show how the BSC can be used as a management tool, in this case using a specific example.

Evolution of the BSC
The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) developed by Dr. Robert Kaplan and David Norton in the early 1990's as a new strategic management approach is to enable an organization to clarify its vision from different perspectives and create future value for the organization by concretising the metrics and actions necessary for this vision to come true. The basic methodology behind this performance management approach is that an organization should be able to define performance measurement system or metrics based on the organization’s value core drivers which should include everything that enhances the organization’s value (that is customer service), innovations deemed for the good health of the organisation, operational efficiency to meet the organisation’s goals, financial performance that should give the company and customers a better position on the market, and the strategy as set by the management of the company. (Clampitt, 2005).