Kontextualisering av balanserad styrning på divisionsnivå i en offentlig organisation : En fallstudie av Norrbottens läns landsting

The private sector has always looked for ways to make their business more effective and increase their profitability; this has led to development of new performance management models. During the early 1990s, the non -profit organizations started to look to the private sector and their performance management models with hopes of being able to make their organizations more effective. This new trend of non- profit organizations adopting management models developed for the private sector came to be called New Public Management. Perhaps the most common performance management model public organizations seem to embrace is the Balanced Scorecard. The fact that many Swedish public organizations choose to implement Balanced Scorecard is known. With this study, we intended to examine what happens to the Balanced Scorecard in a organization after it has been implemented. The purpose of this study was therefore to describe how divisions in a Swedish county council adapt and translate the Balanced Scorecard when the model travels down in the organization and explain what factors influence this adaptation and translation process. Since the County Council, Norrbottens läns landsting, implemented the Balanced Scorecard during 2013-2014, it gave us a unique opportunity to follow an implementation process up close. After a review of previous research and theories, we chose to use the institutional theory, more specifically the translation theory and its rules for decontextualizing and contextualizing as our explanatory theory. These theories was then compared with the extensive empirical evidence we collected through interviews with several managers at the division level and one manager of the highest county management in our chosen County Council. We also examined all the scorecards from all levels of the organization. The results showed that, although the idea was that a unified model was to be introduced throughout the organization, transformation of the model occurred when it was broken down and translated into the various divisions and that the model differ between divisions. The study's conclusions are that the context where the model is introduced affects how the model will be shaped. And that the internal contacts that occur between divisions within the organization affect how the model is shaped.Validerat; 20140625 (global_studentproject_submitter