Organizational alignment using the balance scorecard approach: Case study of a Malaysian government-linked company / Hazeline Ayoup

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) constitutes one of the most popular performance measurement systems for organizations. Used solely as a performance measurement system, the BSC highlighted a serious setback: inability of the traditional management systems to link a company’s longterm vision with its short-term strategies. Premised on this deficiency, the BSC application has been further innovated to include using it as an organizational alignment tool. Specifically, the strategic use of BSC as an organizational alignment tool has been proposed by Kaplan and Norton in their 2006’s book Alignment: Using BSC to Create Corporate Synergies. Despite the detail implementation framework outlined in their book, there has been very limited literature written by previous researchers or practitioners to implicate the usage of BSC as an alignment tool. Most works on BSC were based mainly on its role as a performance measurement tool or premised on limited, superficial and generic data. The present study examines the use of BSC as an organizational alignment tool in a large government-linked company (GLC) in Malaysia. To be named as ATB, the case study company was one of the pioneer companies to implement BSC in this country way back in 1996. The use of BSC as an alignment tool became prominent for ATB when the “GLC Transformation Programme” was introduced by the government and came into effect in 2006. This study demonstrates how ATB uses the BSC to create organizational alignment and addresses organizational issues faced by the company in the process. Data for this study were gathered through interviews, analysis of documents, observations and a survey to the company’s employees

Does balanced scorecard improve strategy communication? Qualitative evidence

As a part of a larger study, this study presents an exploratory and qualitative analysis of the used of Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a strategy communication tool in a large Malaysian service provider. Better understanding of organization’s strategy is vital for better implementation of the strategy itself. Kaplan and Norton (1992, 2001), claimed that one of the major advantages of BSC is its ability to enhance the process of communicating corporate strategic objectives from the top to the operational level managers. With regards to this issue, this study specifically explores the used of BSC to facilitate strategy communication between the top and the lower management team.Finding of this study revealed that the BSC does improve communication of firm’s strategic objectives from the top to certain lower managerial levels.The study also indicates some room for improvement regarding the strategy communication issue in a BSC company

What has Happened to MSMEs Performance during the Pandemic in Central Java, Indonesia?

This study aims to determine the relationship between survival strategies, legal protection, and demographic factors (business tenure, age, education level, marital status, and types of capital) with the performance of MSMEs in Central Java. The sampling method used was simple random sampling with a sample size of 153 MSMEs actors. The analysis used was multiple linear using SPSS 24.00. The results of this study show that the independent variable of Survival Strategy (X1) has a significant effect and contributed to forming resilience (Y1) of 75.8%. Secondly, the independent variable of legal protection (X2) has no significant effect in forming resilience (Y1); the contribution is only -2.0%, and the existence of legal protection decreases resilience by 2%. Thirdly, the relative contribution of the survival strategy (X1) independent variable in shaping resilience (Y1) is 102.7%. Fourthly, the relative contribution of the legal protection independent variable (X2) in shaping resilience (Y1) is -2.7%. Lastly, Diploma/Bachelor’s degrees have higher resilience than High School/Vocational School degrees, in which a bachelor’s degree contributes 59.32% to resilience. The study also shows that there is no resilience difference in each group of business status, age, business tenure, and types of capital. Keywords: demographic factors, legal protection, MSMEs, resilience, survival strateg

Observational assessment of the balanced scorecard strategic alignment process: A study of a utility company

As part of a larger study, this paper presents an exploratory and qualitative analysis of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) implementation of a utility company in Malaysia.Specifically, the paper explores whether the use of BSC facilitates the alignment between corporate objectives, strategic business units’ strategies and the key performance indicators of individual managers. After sixteen years of BSC implementation, the company has received some mixed responses, both positive and negative feedback from its stakeholders.One of the major proponents about BSC is its purported ability to create vertical and horizontal alignment between each separated business segments, divisions and at individual level, particularly in a complex organization. Therefore, this study presents an observational assessment on how a Malaysian company which have been utilizing the BSC methodology for more than a decade and still trying to find a better match and alignment between corporate objectives, SBU strategies and KPIs of individual managers.It presents the current state of BSC alignment tools and processes used, and premised on some observational and documentation analysis, suggests on several improvement initiatives

A Case Study on Gamifying DevOps Practices in Industry

Gamification is the use of game elements such as points, leaderboards, and badges in a non-game context to encourage a desired behavior from individuals interacting with an environment. Recently, gamification has found its way into software engineering contexts as a means to promote certain activities to practitioners. Previous studies investigated the use of gamification to promote the adoption of a variety of tools and practices, however, these studies were either performed in an educational environment or in small teams of developers in the industry. In this thesis, we performed a large-scale mixed-methods study on the effects of badge based gamification in promoting the adoption of DevOps practices in a very large company and evaluated how practice adoption is associated with changes in key delivery, quality, and throughput metrics of 333 software projects. Our results indicate that gamification accelerated the adoption of some DevOps practices by at least 60%, with increased adoption rates up to 6x. We found mixed results when associating badge adoption and metric changes: teams that earned testing badges showed an increase in bug fixing commits but output fewer commits and pull requests; teams that earned code review and quality tooling badges exhibited faster delivery metrics. Finally, our empirical study was supplemented by a survey with 45 developers where 73% of respondents found badges to be helpful for learning about and adopting new standardized practices. Our results contribute to the rich knowledge on gamification with a unique and important perspective from real industry practitioners

Managing strategic alignment using the balanced scorecard: A Malaysian company’s experience

The main purpose of this study is to explore the used of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a strategic alignment tool in a large Malaysian organization using the qualitative case study approach.This study indicates that the BSC, through its performance indicators helps to partially improve the alignment of a company’s strategic objectives and strategies between the top management and the lower management levels.It also helps to align the various divisions in the organizations at the strategic level.However, full alignment is still a long way to achieve.This study highlighted the importance of awareness, common understanding and systematic alignment process in managing the alignment process and issue faces by the management in the process

The characteristics of Malaysian companies' mission statement and its relationship with financial performance

This study focus on Malaysian public listed companies, viewing at the nature and role of mission statement and the relationship between key components of mission statement and firm performance. The study found that very few Malaysian companies concern on disclosing their mission statement. However, the disclosed mission statements contained almost all the key components that have been addressed in the literature. Besides that, the study also shows a consistent result with the previous study in term of ranking of key components by degree of important. Further, it was found that some of the key components are related to one or two companies' financial performance indicators. This study also reveals, to some extent, that companies who disclose their mission statements are significantly difference than those who do not, in terms of financial performance. Such situation was seemed to be in congruence with the signaling theory

Waste wash water recycling in ready mix concrete plants

The management of waste wash-water (WWW) is one of the most significant environmental problems associated with ready-mix concrete production worldwide. The problems are exacerbated should it be disposed of in an inappropriate manner. This study evaluated the potential of WWW recycling in ready mix concrete plants in Jordan. A representative waste wash-water sample (400 L) was collected from a basin in a ready-mix concrete company. A pilot plant on the lab scale was fabricated and installed. The treatment system consisted of a concrete washout reclaimer, wedgebed slurry settling pond, slow sand filtration unit, and a neutralization unit. Water samples were collected from all stages of the pilot plant and analyzed. The collected waste wash-water samples were utilized for replacement of well water (mixing water) at various ratios. Fourteen concrete mixtures were produced and cast, as well as tested at various curing ages (7, 28, and 90 days). The results show that the raw WWW was not acceptable as mixing water even after dilution as it led to significant reductions in concrete compressive strength and low workability. However, the WWW from the settling pond, the filtered WWW and the filtered-neutralized WWW at dilution ratios up to 75% were shown to be potential alternatives to fresh water for ready-mixed concrete. Therefore, the current guidelines for mixing water quality should be revised to encourage the reuse of the WWW

Strategic alignment and performance measurement: the case of TM Berhad / Prof Dr Normah Hj Omar and Hazeline Ayoup

Managing companies' performance is a dynamic activity which is subjects to continuous changes from time to time. It encompasses various internal and external organizational factors exhibit conflict of interest between companies' strategic mission, vision and strategies and the individuals who work in the organizations. Rapid changes in the business environment globally especially with the fast moving technological advancement has forced companies to manage their performance to sustain its competitive advantages and improve performance. Numerous performance management tools have been developed to facilitate performance management processes along the way. Among numerous performance management tools developed, the BSC has received great attention from researchers and practitioners from worldwide since it was introduced in the early 1990s. A lot of studies have been conducted to explore and understand its benefit, shortcoming, implementation and implication (Srite, Galvin, Anuja and Karahanna, 2007; Anand, Sahay and Saha, 2005; Davis and Albright, 2004; Braam and Nijssen, 2004; and Maiga and Jacobs, 2003). However, it is aware that implementing BSC is not an easy task. Kaplan and Norton (2001) mentioned that many BSC implementation fail. Atkinson (2006) supported this claim founded that the successful story of BSC implementation is just about 30 percent (Atkinson, 2006)