Evidence of institutionalizing elements in the Balanced Scorecard in the book Strategy in action: a view based on institutional theory

Abstract

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a methodology that allows managers to define and implement a set of financial or nonfinancial indicators in a balanced way to assess an organization's performance from four viewpoints. Many companies are unsuccessful in their implementation of the BSC. This lack of success may be attributed to different factors, such as strategic problems, planning failures, and poorly defined targets and goals. However, the failed implementation may be attributed in part to the failure to institutionalize habits and routines. In this regard, this objective of this paper is to use institutional theory to determine whether the book Strategy in Action: Balanced Scorecard contains evidence that the BSC model proposed by the authors (Kaplan & Norton) includes elements that favor the model's institutionalization. For this purpose, a qualitative bibliographic survey was prepared. The survey revealed 404 clues that were rated according to Tolbert and Zucker's description of the processes inherent to institutionalization and to Scott's proposed framework of legitimation/legitimizing. These findings suggest that the book primarily legitimizes the BSC by examining organizations and describes it as an acknowledged management instrument. The aspects supporting the semi-institutional stage (26% of the findings) and the total institutionalization stage (10% of findings) suggest that the authors intended to propose a tool without focusing on the institutionalization process, which may partly explain the great difficulty faced by companies attempting to implement this methodology.