scholarly journals Operationalising performance management in local government: The use of the balanced scorecard

Author(s):  
Zwelinzima J. Ndevu ◽  
Kobus Muller

Orientation: Local government forms that part of the public sector closest to citizens and therefore indispensable in its role of providing essential goods and services and developing the local area. Local government has the authority and functions necessary to provide services for the maintenance and promotion of the well-being of all people within their area and should provide access to basic services such as water, electricity and health care.Research purpose: This study examines performance management as a tool in local government effective provision service delivery. The critical question addressed in this paper was how the balanced scorecard (BSC) can be used to improve performance in the context of local government and assist in eradicating the current challenges of lack of quality services, poverty and infrastructure development.Motivation for the study: The need for continuous improvement in service delivery at local government compounded by high levels of service delivery protest requires regular review of performance management system.Research approach: To understand the current context and challenges facing local government, the applicable legislative framework including the Constitution, white paper and the National Development Plans were perused to better understand the legal environment in which local government operates. A literature review was undertaken to evaluate theory on organisational effectiveness. Semi-structured interviews were used to solicit expert opinions.Main findings/managerial implications: The BSC approach emerged as the preferred tool because the method offered the authors the opportunity to review non-financial and financial factors to arrive at a balanced conclusion. A BSC tool was developed and applied to the Joe Gqabi District Municipality as a case study.Practical implications: The BSC as a performance management tool enables organisations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into goal or actions.Contribution/value-add: The research findings conclude that there was acknowledgement of the importance of performance measurement instruments in the municipality, yet the municipality still experienced challenges caused by the performance review process not being transparent and not communicated to all stakeholders.

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 231
Author(s):  
Botaina Mjidila ◽  
Youssef El Wazani ◽  
Malika Souaf

This paper focuses on the practice of Management Control within public organizations. Also, it provides an overview of the various constraints limiting the success of the implementation of this discipline in this type of organization. It also focuses on the impact of the implementation of a performance management system on these structures. Modernization and performance, two notions which is interdependent with the practice of management control, will also be mentioned in a synthetic way. In order to do this, we first present the concepts of modernization and performance. This was done according to different approaches. After then, it analyzed the performance management tool mostly used by private companies: "the management dashboard". Finally, the last part of this study will be devoted to discussing the relevance of the balanced scorecard developed by Norton and Kaplan. Also, they considered the balance scorecard to be the most appropriate tool in the public domain.


2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manoj Anand ◽  
B S Sahay ◽  
Subhashish Saha

There has been growing criticism of financial measures in performance evaluation system in postreform India as they are historic in nature and lack futuristic outlook. Their relevance in the information age, when the companies are building internal assets and capabilities, is questioned. The situation may worsen when the firm is compelled to pursue short-term goals at the cost of the organization's long-term objectives. Kaplan and Norton developed an innovative and multi-dimensional corporate performance scorecard known as the Balanced Scorecard. It compels the firm to align its performance measurement and controls from the customers' perspective, internal business processes, and learning and growth perspectives and investigate their impact on the financial indicators. There are arguments that the Balanced Scorecard should be ‘unbalanced’ based on the strategy followed by the firm. The corporate experiences with the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard suggest mixed results. In this article, the authors a) identify the extent of the usage of the Balanced Scorecard by corporate India; b) explore whether Indian firms use all the four perspectives, namely, customer, financial, internal business, and learning and growth in their performance scorecard; c) capture the management motivations for implementation of the Balanced Scorecard; d) identify the key performance indicators in different perspectives of the performance scorecard; and e) evaluate the performance of the Balanced Scorecard as a management tool. The major findings of this study are as follows: The Balanced Scorecard adoption rate is 45.28 per cent in corporate India which compares favourably with 43.90 per cent in the US. The financial perspective has been found to be the most important perspective followed by customers' perspective, shareholders' perspective, internal business perspective, and learning and growth perspective. The environmental, social, and employees' perspectives also figure in it. The expense centre budgets, brand revenue/market share monitoring, profit centre, and transfer pricing mechanism are the other performance management tools used by the Indian companies. Corporate India monitors the indicators as per ISO 14000 norms in the environmental and social perspectives of the performance scorecard. The difficulty in assigning ‘weightage’ to the different perspectives and in ‘establishing cause and effect relationship among these perspectives’ has been found to be the most critical issue in the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard in corporate India. Most companies claimed that the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard has led to the identification of cost reduction opportunities in their organizations which, in turn, has resulted in improvement in the bottom line. Insights from such an analysis can be useful to both management practitioners and management accounting academics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-21
Author(s):  
Mark Anthony Camilleri

This article presents a critical review of the relevant literature on managerialism and performance management in higher education. Afterwards, it features an inductive research that involved semi-structured interview sessions with academic members of staff. The interpretative study relied on the balanced scorecard’s (BSC) approach as it appraised the participants’ opinions and perceptions on their higher education institution’s (HEI) customer, internal, organizational capacity and financial perspectives. The findings have revealed the strengths and weaknesses of using the BSC’s financial and non-financial measures to assess the institutional performance and the productivity of individual employees. In sum, this research reported that ongoing performance conversations with academic employees will help HEI leaders to identify their institutions’ value-creating activities. This contribution implies that HEI leaders can utilize the BSC’s comprehensive framework as a plausible, performance management tool to regularly evaluate whether their institution is (i) delivering inclusive, student-centred, quality education; (ii) publishing high-impact research; (iii) engaging with internal and external stakeholders; and (iv) improving its financial results, among other positive outcomes.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Arif

PurposeThis study has been undertaken to find as to how the Pakistan defense services being resource-intensive organizations can help to secure the natural environment and achieve sustained national development by adopting modern management concepts like the balanced scorecard (BSC) while not compromising on their core aim of achieving strategic national defense objectives. With this main purpose in mind, this study focused on locating the core functionalities of Pakistan armed services to be adopted as the key perspectives for building their BSCs.Design/methodology/approachThis study is quantitative in nature, and after the formulation of hypotheses by carrying out a thorough literature review, the distributed questionnaire collected quantitative data to test the hypotheses using computer-based SPSS software. Personnel of all the three arms of Pakistan defense service, namely army, navy and the air force, formed the population of this study.FindingsThis quantitative study has found that pursuit of national purpose, availability of resources, internal processes and building for future are the main core functionalities of Pakistan defense services and can be safely adopted as the main perspectives for the development of their BSCs to ensure sustained national development by exercising economy of resources without overburdening the natural resources and the environment.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of this study are based on cross-sectional data rather than longitudinal; therefore, these are not a representative of a dynamic situation. As the data collection for this study is limited to Pakistan, its findings cannot be generalized globally.Originality/valueThis study is unique in a way as it endeavors to bring out empirically that how a public entity like defense force can contribute to the safe keeping of environment while achieving sustained development. Most importantly, it highlights that how BSC as a management tool can help the defense force leadership to achieve desired state of sustained national development through intelligent application of precious resources placed on their disposal.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 168
Author(s):  
Peter N. Kiriri

Universities play a crucial role in the development of any nation. The success of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is the bedrock of the growth in human capacity required to support the growth of an economy. However, HEIs have been criticized for not playing their rightful role in national development. This has been partly attributed to not being able to manage their performance in view of the dynamic and turbulent environment they are operating in. Most HEIs have been caught up in the “business as usual” situation preferring doing things in the traditional ways as opposed to changing with the times. As a result their survival has been at risk especially from those HEIs who have adopted the “business un-usual” mentality. It is as a result of the challenges facing Kenyan HEIs that this paper proposes an adoption of the Balanced Scorecard as a management tool in HEIs. This paper provides a review of literature on the HEI environment globally and in Kenya, highlighting the challenges faced by Kenyan HEIs and proposes the use of the BSC to address the same. The BSC is a tool that helps mainstream the vision and mission of HEIs in their activities thus making the HEIs become strategy focused organizations. The BSC is a strategic planning and management system used to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization and to monitor organization performance against strategic goals. Finally, a sample BSC for HEIs in Kenya is proposed. It is felt that if HEIs focused on the issues proposed and measured their performance on the issues identified, their performance will be improved tremendously.


Author(s):  
Panagiotis Dimitropoulos ◽  
Ioannis Kosmas ◽  
Ioannis Douvis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of performance management in the public sector and specifically the implementation of the balanced scorecard (BSC) methodology on a public (municipal) non-profit sport organization in Greece. The research provides a discussion on the BSC development process, the goals set on each pillar and the outcome that the organization achieved, in order to be used as a roadmap for other managers in the public sector. Design/methodology/approach The study used information extracted from the municipal board of Papagos-Holargos city in Greece, including board reports, documents and decision transcripts and open-ended interviews related to the implementation of BSC method, as well as to the impact of this decision on the quality of services, citizens’ satisfaction and the improvement of internal processes. Findings The results indicated that the citizens of Papagos-Holargos perceived sport services to be of enhanced quality related to/when compared to the previous years (based on a questionnaire submitted by the citizens of Papagos-Holargos at the end of the each sample per year). In addition, the staff improved its skills and abilities by participating in training seminars and, in general, the implementation of the BSC method on the municipal sport organization of Papagos-Holargos city sets the basis for an effective performance management which can enhance its future sustainability. Practical implications Managers of municipal and public sport organizations could use the findings of the study as a roadmap for discussing, evaluating and possibly implementing the BSC approach in their organizations’ daily operations. Originality/value This study fills a significant gap in the existing literature on the implementation of a traditional business performance management tool on a non-profit public sport organization.


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