Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard

David Norton and I introduced the Balanced Scorecard in a 1992 Harvard Business Review article (Kaplan & Norton, 1992). The article was based on a multi-company research project to study performance measurement in companies whose intangible assets played a central role in value creation (Nolan Norton Institute, 1991). Norton and I believed that if companies were to improve the management of their intangible assets, they had to integrate the measurement of intangible assets into their management systems. After publication of the 1992 HBR article, several companies quickly adopted the Balanced Scorecard giving us deeper and broader insights into its power and potential. During the next 15 years, as it was adopted by thousands of private, public, and nonprofit enterprises around the world, we extended and broadened the concept into a management tool for describing, communicating and implementing strategy. This paper describes the roots and motivation for the original Balanced Scorecard article as well as the subsequent innovations that connected it to a larger management literature.

Formal Measures in Informal Management: Can a Balanced Scorecard Change a Culture?

We extend traditional agency theory by exploring the roles for formal measures when managerial behavior is not governed by rules, formulas, or contracts. Part I describes relational incentive contracts with informal weights on formal performance measures. More importantly, it also explores how formal measures could be used in models of informal management, such as adaptation and coordination, politics and influence, leadership, and informal authority. Part II considers the benefits from allowing key stakeholders to develop their own, potentially inferior, performance measures. The collaboration to create a "balanced scorecard" of performance measures can help change an organization's culture

The influence of organizational hierarchy and departmental structure on communication : the case of Kaplan and Norton's Balanced scorecard in a matrix organization

Thesis (S.M. in System Design and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 80-81).A large business requires efficient and effective internal communication among employees to achieve its goals. Dodds, Watts, and Sable (DWS) introduced a communication network model assessing information flow within a business by examining the relative influences of organizational structure, message volatility, and task decomposability on the probability of successful message transmission, but there is no research available that examines this or similar models in the context of a real business. The model predicts optimal message flow in a "Multi-scale" organizational network, a structure which in practice may most resemble a matrix organization. In this study a survey was designed to measure the influence of rank and department on message transfer - particularly the informational attributes of understanding, accuracy, importance, and influenceability - originating from the Balanced Scorecard in a large, matrix-managed aerospace business. The survey data indicated the following results: - Understanding (of the Balanced Scorecard metrics) was significantly influenced by employee rank and exhibited some effects of departmental expertise with certain metrics. - Belief in the accuracy of the metrics correlated highly with Understanding. - Importance rankings of the metric displayed high alignment across both rank and department, an encouraging result for company management. - Influenceability (people's belief they could affect the metric) was heavily influenced by rank and somewhat influenced by department. It also generally exhibited the lowest levels and highest variation when compared to the other attributes. - A deeper analysis comparing the Engineering and Program Office departments revealed consistently better vertical communication for Engineering, and better lateral communication within ranks for Program Office, which may indicate an additional influence of department culture on information flow. When subjected to a DWS interpretation, the survey results provided clues about relative influences of rank and department on message flow and relative values of other DWS model parameters - task decomposability and message traffic volume - could be gleaned from employee comments and post-survey interviews. The study falls short of making absolute characterizations of the DWS attributes, but is able to make inferences regarding the communication of the separate attributes relative to each other. Indeed, one important implication of the work done here to DWS theory is that for different business concerns and for different organizations within the overall company, there are apparently different mappings onto the DWS communication framework. Analysis of the study data for this organization indicates lateral communication may be better than vertical communication for Understanding and Influenceability; Accuracy does not exhibit dominance by either parameter; and Importance is well communicated laterally and vertically. More empirical data on measurable information traffic such as email is needed from different organizations, industries, and national cultures for DWS parameter values to converge upon more absolute values.by James Clayton Kopp.S.M.in System Design and Managemen

Accounting for carbon offsets: establishing the foundation for carbon-trading markets

Tackling climate change requires reductions in current and future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well as the removal of existing GHG from the atmosphere. Carbon-offset producers purport to provide such removals. But poor measurement practices and inadequate controls have led to extensive trading of instruments that do not materially reduce the supply of atmospheric GHG. To address these challenges, we apply basic financial-accounting principles to develop an accurate and auditable set of offset accounting principles. These principles complement and extend the E-liability method of accounting for GHG emissions. Having rigorous accounting for both emissions and offsets will expand market forces for impactful decarbonization

Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva: Clinical and Genetic Aspects

Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) is a severely disabling heritable disorder of connective tissue characterized by congenital malformations of the great toes and progressive heterotopic ossification that forms qualitatively normal bone in characteristic extraskeletal sites. The worldwide prevalence is approximately 1/2,000,000. There is no ethnic, racial, gender, or geographic predilection to FOP. Children who have FOP appear normal at birth except for congenital malformations of the great toes. During the first decade of life, sporadic episodes of painful soft tissue swellings (flare-ups) occur which are often precipitated by soft tissue injury, intramuscular injections, viral infection, muscular stretching, falls or fatigue. These flare-ups transform skeletal muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia, and aponeuroses into heterotopic bone, rendering movement impossible. Patients with atypical forms of FOP have been described. They either present with the classic features of FOP plus one or more atypical features [FOP plus], or present with major variations in one or both of the two classic defining features of FOP [FOP variants]. Classic FOP is caused by a recurrent activating mutation (617G>A; R206H) in the gene ACVR1/ALK2 encoding Activin A receptor type I/Activin-like kinase 2, a bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) type I receptor. Atypical FOP patients also have heterozygous ACVR1 missense mutations in conserved amino acids. The diagnosis of FOP is made by clinical evaluation. Confirmatory genetic testing is available. Differential diagnosis includes progressive osseous heteroplasia, osteosarcoma, lymphedema, soft tissue sarcoma, desmoid tumors, aggressive juvenile fibromatosis, and non-hereditary (acquired) heterotopic ossification. Although most cases of FOP are sporadic (noninherited mutations), a small number of inherited FOP cases show germline transmission in an autosomal dominant pattern. At present, there is no definitive treatment, but a brief 4-day course of high-dose corticosteroids, started within the first 24 hours of a flare-up, may help reduce the intense inflammation and tissue edema seen in the early stages of the disease. Preventative management is based on prophylactic measures against falls, respiratory decline, and viral infections. The median lifespan is approximately 40 years of age. Most patients are wheelchair-bound by the end of the second decade of life and commonly die of complications of thoracic insufficiency syndrome

Gap Domain Wall Fermions

I demonstrate that the chiral properties of Domain Wall Fermions (DWF) in the large to intermediate lattice spacing regime of QCD, 1 to 2 GeV, are significantly improved by adding to the action two standard Wilson fermions with supercritical mass equal to the negative DWF five dimensional mass. Using quenched DWF simulations I show that the eigenvalue spectrum of the transfer matrix Hamiltonian develops a substantial gap and that the residual mass decreases appreciatively. Furthermore, I confirm that topology changing remains active and that the hadron spectrum of the added Wilson fermions is above the lattice cutoff and therefore is irrelevant. I argue that this result should also hold for dynamical DWF and furthermore that it should improve the chiral properties of related fermion methods.Comment: 12 pages of text, 14 figures, added sect.6 on topology and reference

The future of accountancy – beyond the numbers.

The pace of change continues to increase through rapid developments in technology which are likely to transform ways of working in the accounting profession. Whilst some of this change is likely to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, much of the mundane ‘number-crunching’ and data processing currently undertaken by accountants will be automated over the next few years. This should not be regarded as a threat, but more of an opportunity to embrace the softer skills and more value-added work such as consultancy; advising clients and businesses on how to derive more value from their business models. This will require a change of skillset and an appreciation of the wider issues impacting business ‘beyond the numbers’.N/

Book Reviews

Book Reviews by Charles S. Desmond, Godfrey P. Schmidt, Robert E. Sullivan, Louis C. Kaplan, and Paul C. Bartholomew

Frame-Dragging Vortexes and Tidal Tendexes Attached to Colliding Black Holes: Visualizing the Curvature of Spacetime

When one splits spacetime into space plus time, the spacetime curvature (Weyl tensor) gets split into an "electric" part E_{jk} that describes tidal gravity and a "magnetic" part B_{jk} that describes differential dragging of inertial frames. We introduce tools for visualizing B_{jk} (frame-drag vortex lines, their vorticity, and vortexes) and E_{jk} (tidal tendex lines, their tendicity, and tendexes), and also visualizations of a black-hole horizon's (scalar) vorticity and tendicity. We use these tools to elucidate the nonlinear dynamics of curved spacetime in merging black-hole binaries.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure