Developing a Balanced Scorecard for Great Persons, Inc. (GPI)

Running head: GREAT PERSONS, INC.
Financial and Performance Management
[Great Persons, Inc. (GPI)]
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive summary
The main purpose of this assignment is to develop a balanced scorecard for the case study
company GPI. The case study company seems to have some problems related to its different
business aspects like customer service, employee engagement, financial management and
strategic information systems management. While doing the development of the balanced
scorecard this study also critically evaluates the applicability of balanced scorecard across the
range of industries.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
Question 1:.......................................................................................................................................3
2. A critical evaluation of Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management
System and its application to the organization in the case study.....................................................3
A critical evaluation:....................................................................................................................3
Application:.................................................................................................................................5
Application of the BSC on GPI:..............................................................................................6
Question 2:.......................................................................................................................................7
3. Developing a proposed balanced scorecard:................................................................................7
Vision, mission and strategic objectives:.....................................................................................8
Stakeholder Analysis:..................................................................................................................9
Critical Success Factors:..............................................................................................................9
Balanced Scorecard:..................................................................................................................12
4. Conclusion.................................................................................................................................16
References......................................................................................................................................17

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1. Introduction
The main purpose of this assignment is to develop a balanced scorecard for the case study
organisation Great Persons, Inc. (GPI). It is a not-for-profit organisation aimed to serve various
areas such as helping the community where they operate and providing needful services to them.
The case study organisation is facing some challenges, which is stopping them to fulfill their
mission and vision strategy. In fact, few of its members do not even have their practices aligned
to the business objective. To them, financial performance is the only objective of GPI. This is a
problem situation for the organisation considering they have multiple business objectives relating
to different areas like finance and customer service (Korableva, Kalimullina and Kurbanova
2017). The purpose of this study, which has been mentioned earlier in this section will be served
in two distinct ways. First, scholarly articles are being used to perform a critical evaluation of
Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard. It is followed by an application of the balanced
scorecard in the case study organisation. Second, the balanced scorecard was developed for the
case study organisation. It follows a set of critical success factors (CSFs) for this designed
balanced scorecard.
Question 1:
2. A critical evaluation of Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic
Management System and its application to the organization in the case study
A critical evaluation:
Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard provides a strategic way to plan how the
company is likely to perform in the future. The process also includes identifying the critical
success factors (CSFs) for the designed balanced scorecard. Moreover, the identification of

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critical success factors (CSFs) also gives an understanding of the problem areas. The balanced
scorecard despite being a good way to achieve balance across the various business aspects have
certain limitations. The balanced scorecard becomes problematic when implementing this to the
practice. As argued by Zhao and Li (2015), the balanced scorecard (BSC) has high rates of
implementation failure. It creates considerable variations in interpretations and practice of the
BSC. According to Harden and Upton (2016), the BSC was expected to have matured, and
become easier and productive to be applied across the organisations. However, it could not. After
three decades of existence, the concept of BSC is still criticised for its applicability across the
organisations. These criticisms explore that the applicability of BSC has limitations. At the
conceptual level, it is being criticised as well. Awadallah and Allam (2015) criticise Kaplan and
Norton for unethically owning the concept of BSC, which was actually the result of collaborative
development between an engineering and management firm, and Analog Devices management.
According to Madsen and Stenheim (2015), the balanced scorecard is very much suitable for
engineering firms; however, not so beneficial for other industries like service industries. For
example, the internal process of the BSC may not be suitable for a consulting firm yet BSC
asserts that all of its four variables or performance metrics are important. Cooper, Ezzamel and
Qu (2017) disagree with practice-oriented literature suggestions on the BSC. This literature
considers the BSC an effective tool to improve strategy awareness execution, communication
and achievement. Cooper, Ezzamel and Qu (2017) say that the BSC is more about increasing
attention to strategy rather than the BSC itself.
Dudin and Frolova (2015) identify balanced scorecard as effective in improving the
firms' performance. The evaluation of the author is based on a close observation of an electrical
firm that has implemented the balanced scorecard. The author did observe that the

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implementation of the balanced scorecard had positive impacts on sales, and net and gross profit.
Moreover, it is also being noticed that the removal of the BSC has negative impacts on sales net
profit and gross profit. Dankó and Molnár (2017) observe that the implementation of the
balanced scorecard is time intensive. The time needed to perform the balanced scorecard
implementation could be utilised to perform the assigned responsibilities. As argued by
Anjomshoae et al. (2017), the suggestions as given by Kaplan and Norton in the form of the
balanced scorecard do not meet the needs of the stakeholders. The strategic objectives and
performance measures as suggested in the balanced scorecard leave out the interest of other key
stakeholders like suppliers, the environment and the government. It rather caters the interest of
shareholders. Massingham, Massingham and Dumay (2019) criticise the balanced scorecard for
its lack of engagement and explicit involvement with the employees. This is to be noted that the
learning and growth, and internal process performance metrics are related with employees.
However, it at times does not relate to the employee support. At times, it happens that the
balanced scorecard does not appear advantageous to the employees. According to Kang et al.
(2015), balanced scorecard enables an organisation to be able to transform its strategy into other
measures like tangible measures of performance. By limiting an organisation to just the four
categories as explained in the balanced scorecard, the balanced scorecard may introduce rigidity.
Rigidity is evident in the fact that the four performance measures as evidenced in the balanced
scorecard form the foundation of the CSFs. Furthermore, there is the danger that the
organisations will lose their concerns on other than these four performance areas.
Application:
From manufacturing to construction industries, the balanced scorecard has been applied
to many sectors. The balanced scorecard was found as benefitting for the organisations dealing