COMMENTARY Transforming the Balanced （评论将平衡）.pdfVIP

© 2001 American Accounting Association Accounting Horizons Vol. 15 No. 2 June 2001 pp. 147–160 COMMENTARY Transforming the Balanced Scorecard from Performance Measurement to Strategic Management: Part II Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton Robert S. Kaplan is a Professor at Harvard University and David P. Norton is founder and president of the Balanced Scorecard Collabo- rative in Lincoln, Massachusetts. In a previous paper (Kaplan and Norton 2001b), we described the role for strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards to develop performance objectives and measures linked to strategy. With this paper, we show how organizations use their scorecards to align key management processes and systems to the strategy. We also discuss the relation- ship of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to other financial and cost measurement initia- tives, such as shareholder value metrics and activity-based costing, and quality pro- grams. We conclude with suggestions about opportunities for additional research on measurement and management systems. THE FIVE PRINCIPLES OF A STRATEGY-FOCUSED ORGANIZATION When asked to describe how the Balanced Scorecard helped them achieve break- through performance, executives of adopting organizations continually referred to two words: alignment and focus (Kaplan and Norton 2001a, Chapter 1). Although each or- ganization achieved strategic alignment and focus in different ways, at different paces and in different sequences, each eventually used a common set of five principles, which we refer to as the Principles of a Strategy-Focused Organization, portrayed in Figure 1. Principle #1: Translate the Strategy to Operational Terms Organizations translate their strategy into the logical architecture of a strategy map and Balanced Scorecard to specify in detail the critical elements for their growth strategies (Kaplan and