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COMPANIES AROUND THE WORLD ARE DERIVING BENEFITS FROM PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT TOOLS.
Although scorecarding systems have been around for quite some time, their popularity and use have increased considerably since Robert Kaplan and David Norton introduced the balanced scorecard in 1992. While perhaps initially viewed as a North American performance management tool, the balanced scorecard and other scorecarding systems are now used around the world.
The increasingly global scope of scorecarding raises interesting questions and issues. Do the reasons organizations adopt scorecarding systems vary by region? Are companies looking for-and receiving-the same benefits? Is the effectiveness of these systems the same worldwide? While Kaplan and Norton say that they haven't encountered any cultural barriers to implementing the scorecard, we know of no study that has validated this idea empirically. Cultural differences, while not a barrier, may significantly affect the reason these systems are employed and how they are designed and implemented. The increasingly global nature of business underscores the importance of understanding the impact of regional differences on performance management techniques, par-ticlarly scorecards. Here we explore the benefits of scorecarding systems and the perceived similarities and differences of these benefits to organizations around the world.
AN INTERNATIONAL STUDY
To explore issues such as those just mentioned, we are conducting an international online survey that is examining, among other things, the adoption and use of scorecarding systems. Available on the Web in eight languages, the survey is sponsored by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA®) and other professional and consulting organizations from around the world (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Balanced Scorecard Netherlands, CAM-I, Society of Management Accountants of Canada (CMA Canada), Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (ClMA), CompetitiveScotland.com, Deloitte Germany, Hyperion Solutions, Van der Leer, and Yacsa.com).
So far we have received 382 usable responses-from entire organizations or from subunits such as divisions or subsidiaries-from 44 countries. Of these, 193 respondents have indicated that they use a scorecarding system. Although we asked survey respondents to use their own definition of a scorcarding system (we didn't provide one), most agreed that such a system should include these attributes:
* Key performance indicator (KPI)/measure reports (84%),
* Actions and objectives that are supported by measures or KPIs (83%),
* Scorecards for different levels of the...