Balanced Scorecard - History

History

Organizations have used systems consisting of a mix of financial and non-financial measures to track progress for quite some time. One example of a such a system was created by Art Schneiderman in 1987 at Analog Devices, a mid-sized semi-conductor company; the Analog Devices Balanced Scorecard was similar to what is now recognised as a "First Generation" Balanced Scorecard design. Subsequently Art Schneiderman participated in an unrelated research study in 1990 led by Dr. Robert S. Kaplan in conjunction with US management consultancy Nolan-Norton, and during this study described his work on performance measurement. Subsequently, Kaplan and David P. Norton included anonymous details of this use of Balanced Scorecard in their 1992 article on Balanced Scorecard. Kaplan and Norton's article wasn't the only paper on the topic published in early 1992 but the 1992 Kaplan and Norton paper was a popular success, and was quickly followed by a second in 1993. In 1996, they published the book The Balanced Scorecard. These articles and the first book spread knowledge of the concept of Balanced Scorecard widely, and has led to Kaplan and Norton being seen as the creators of the Balanced Scorecard concept.

While the "Balanced Scorecard" terminology was coined by Art Schneiderman, the roots of performance management as an activity run deep in management literature and practice. Management historians such as Alfred Chandler suggest the origins of performance management can be seen in the emergence of the complex organisation - most notably during the 19th Century in the USA. More recent influences may include the pioneering work of General Electric on performance measurement reporting in the 1950s and the work of French process engineers (who created the tableau de bord – literally, a "dashboard" of performance measures) in the early part of the 20th century. The tool also draws strongly on the ideas of the 'resource based view of the firm' proposed by Edith Penrose. However it should be noted that none of these influences is explicitly linked to original descriptions of Balanced Scorecard by Schneiderman, Maisel, or Kaplan & Norton.

Kaplan and Norton's first book, The Balanced Scorecard, remains their most popular. The book reflects the earliest incarnations of Balanced Scorecard - effectively restating the concept as described in the second Harvard Business Review article. Their second book, The Strategy Focused Organization, echoed work by others (particularly in Scandinavia) on the value of visually documenting the links between measures by proposing the "Strategic Linkage Model" or strategy map. Since then Balanced Scorecard books have become more common - in early 2010 Amazon was listing several hundred titles in English which had Balanced Scorecard in the title.