Balanced Scorecard as a management model in the waste sector

Abstract

All Organizations recognize that internal methodologies and frameworks are very important to have a thorough knowledge of their potential, simultaneous increase competitiveness and, correspondingly, enhance and optimize the performance of their service. Waste management is a challenge of modern society, and there is awareness that responsibility of waste management should be shared by all community, to cooperate and ensure a sustainable development with the best principles and best management practices. It is a citizenship issue, where citizens contribute adopting preventative behaviours in the production of waste, as well as practices that facilitate waste recycling, reuse and recovery, which contribute to reduce the waste life cycle. This concern and the service improvement involve the minimization of the environmental impacts, the conservation of the natural resources, the reduction of pollutant emissions, as well as the design of the solutions for the collection, transfer and transport, treatment and waste final deposition, and the allocation of human and financial resources. The need for a sustainable management of resources has led to the design and development of management models in waste systems to assess in what extent the various tasks or activities are (or are not) carried out in accordance with the objectives established in advance and the efforts, decisions and operational actions developed by organisations to improve the quality of its work. Thus, given the problems and requirements of the waste sector, it is necessary to outline and plan sustainable strategies for the management system. Therefore, the objective of the present work is the application and study of key concepts related to design and implementation of a management model, the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). This is a management method based on critical success factors, which propose is to translate through a systemic approach, the mission and strategy of Organizations (private or public / nonprofit) in operational objectives, arranged into perspectives interconnected in a cause-effect relation. It connects the strategic objectives to measurable measures (performance indicators) that indicate the success or failure of the adopted strategy, contributing to a review. The BSC is a very useful and simple management tool, which perfectly suits the needs of the waste sector. It works as a measurement and management system, and a basis for the strategy communication to all elements of the system, and through a joint analysis, demonstrates of the importance of all stakeholders to the overall management, encouraging their involvement and motivation