The balanced scorecard at Skellefteå municipality

The concept of the balanced scorecard was introduced by Harvard professors Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton in 1992 when organizations realized that it was no longer sustainable to focus only on financial objectives in order to stay competitive. The balanced scorecard was traditionally developed for use in for-profit organizations but with its fundamental idea that the financial perspective does not always cover what is most important, it has also been implemented in non-profit organizations where profit maximization is not the main objective. Although the balanced scorecard is presented to be an effective management system for survival in a more challenging and competing environment it has also been strongly criticized by several authors as well as organization that have unsuccessfully implemented it. Empirical studies evaluating this relatively new management control system are still rather limited, especially in non-profit organization which made us eager to look deeper into the effects of using the balanced scorecard and we identified a research problem; Is the balanced scorecard an effective management system that improves the performance of a local public administration in Northern Sweden? For this study we identified our alignment toward the positivistic scientific ideal. We have further chosen a deductive approach as the already existing theory of the balanced scorecard is the base of our research. We have used a qualitative research strategy where our empirics are based upon eleven semi-structured interviews with leaders in Skellefteå municipality where they have given their perception of the balanced scorecard and its influence on the organization management. Our main purpose has been to evaluate whether the usage of the balanced scorecard is improving the performance of Skellefteå municipality. In the process of evaluating our results it has been made evident that the management system is perceived as performance increasing even though areas of improvements do exists. One example of improvement could be to develop an IT-tool to facilitate the reporting of the balanced scorecard as it is at present experienced as a very time consuming process since it is manually completed. Skellefteå municipality has put a lot of time and effort on the implementation of the balanced scorecard as well as on developing suitable perspectives and objectives for the management system. Furthermore, the municipality has emphasized the importance of communicating and follows up processes to improve the quality of the system. This careful implementation and utilization is something that has lead to a balanced scorecard that increases the performance of Skellefteå municipalit