Individual Project Unit: Cultural Considerations

Balanced Scorecard

Valerie Jackson Reed

Strategic Management in Dynamic Environments

Balanced Scorecard

A balanced scorecard usually has four parts. One, the learning & growth perspective. Two, the business process perspective. Three, the customer perspective. Four, the financial perspective. The four are used to analyze the management performance in organizations. This paper seeks to explain how a balanced scorecard can be used to analyze the situation in our organization.

The Learning & Growth Perspective

This perspective is analyzed by examining the knowledge and training resources of a company. It looks at how effectively the staff team internalize the information and apply it to make the company very competitive in the industry. Based on this perspective, if the employees are trained or thought new information and fail to utilize it to benefit the company, the company is considered poorly managed. But if the employees manage to utilize all the ideas they receive in training to make the company more competitive, then the company is said to be well managed (Amado et al., 2012).

Based on the learning & growth perspective, our organization is not performing well because junior staffers barely utilize their knowledge to suggest new effective changes in how we can conduct our operations. Instead, it is the management team that figures out and proposes improvements and changes in our organization.

Business Process Perspective

Business process perspective analyzes the firm by looking at how properly products are produced, and services offered. This perspective is analyzed in terms of delays, wastage, shortages, and bottlenecks. So, an organization that hardly wastes any resources during the production process and produces high products enough to meet the market demand, is considered as poorly well. But those that produce inefficiently and inadequately are regarded as mismanaged. Considering this perspective, our organization is underperforming as some employees hardly work on their own; they need strict supervision to work properly (Amado et al., 2012).

Customer Perspectives

This perfective analyzes the organization by looking at customers’ feedback in terms of satisfaction with prices and quality, as well as the availability of products and services. So, the company that inconsistently produces expensive poor-quality products and services is considered as mismanaged. But the firms that are consistent with their production, as well as produce affordable high-quality goods and services, are managed well (Amado et al., 2012). Based on this perspective, our organization is performing poorly because sometimes there is a delay in the production process; as a result, products do not arrive on the market in time.

Financial Perspective

Financial perspective examines an organization by looking at its financial performance. It looks at things such as income, sales, expenditure, revenues, budget variances, financial ratios and profit targets. So, the organization with high income, high sales, high-profit targets and less expenses; is regarded as managed well. But those with high expenses, declining sales, declining income (losses), low-profit target and unfavorable financial ratios are said to be mismanaged (Amado et al., 2012). Based on this rationale, our organization is managed as we make average sales and profits, and the expenses are not extremely high.

Besides employing the global strategy our organization can as well as employ the multi-domestic or transnational strategies. Under the multi-domestic strategy, we will be selling our products to nations whose cultural values and beliefs support consumption of our products. But under transnational strategy, we will export our products to all countries irrespective of their beliefs (Sirkeci, 2013).

Employing more than one strategy is highly important because in case one strategy fails, we will have the other alternative to use, unlike when you use one strategy. For instance, when multi-domestic strategy fails to meet our goals, we can shift to transnational strategy (Sirkeci, 2013).

References

Amado, C. A., Santos, S. P., & Marques, P. M. (2012). Integrating the Data Envelopment Analysis and the Balanced Scorecard approaches for enhanced performance assessment. Omega, 40(3), 390-403.

Sirkeci, I. (2013). Transnational Marketing and Transnational Consumers. Dordrecht: Springer.