Medarbetarnas bild av det balanserade styrkortet - en fallstudie inom finansbranschen

Abstract

Background and problem: The largest part of the research regarding the balanced scorecard discusses the implementation and possibility to communicate the strategy of the company. We consider that surprisingly little research has been conducted on the employees’ perspective. We found this remarkable considering that the employees are the final users of the scorecard. Thus, people’s opinions are highly individual and therefore we find this subject area to be very complex. This motivates our questions at issue for our study; “how do the employees of our case company cinsider the balanced scorecard?” and “what effects does the balanced scorecard have according to the employees?”

Purpose: Our purpose with this research is to understand the employees’ actions based on their individual opinion regarding different aspects about the balanced scorecard.

Delimitations: We have chosen not to describe the construction and implementation of the scorecard but only examine the employees’ point of view. Furthermore, we have only examined two departments of our case company.

Method: We have performed a case study in order to achieve the purpose of our study. Thirteen qualitative interviews have been carried out and the empirical result has been analyzed on the basis of four themes; communication, opinion, use and feedback.

Result and conclusion: Our result shows that meetings have the greatest effect on the employees because mutual communication makes the information more understandable and they also become visible and involved. Furthermore, they regard the scorecard as a means to spur them to improved efforts. The scorecard also functions as a support to improved measurements and as an attention director towards problem areas. However the scorecard is also seen as a document that leads to a sense of frustration and dejection and some employees do not use the scorecard at all. At last, feedback is seen as the most important part since it confirms and encourages the employees.

Recommendations for further research: A comparing study of organisations regarding the employees’ opinions about the balanced scorecard’s effects could contribute to a deeper understanding. The research could be conducted in order for the authors to discover similarities and dissimilarities. Furthermore, a comparing study of different methods of implementation, where the employees are involved at a varied degree, would be of interest. This would add knowledge to which line of action is best according to the employees.