Balanced Scorecard Maintaining Maximum Performance? Evidences from Nordea

Abstract: Background and problem: The traditional management control system has, during the years, been criticized for being insufficient in their development, of which newer and more modern strategic management control tools have been presented to the market, and among those we find the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). Nordea was one out of these companies that chose to implement the BSC concept, where this tool has worked out as an important control system within the organization since the year of 1998. A lot of research has treated different issues surrounding the BSC concept, though this research has mostly focused on the design and the implementation of the BSC as well as it has contributed to some theoretical and empirical investigation as to what successes the BSC has led to. It has, however, been noticed that there has been carried out little research surrounding what success factors can be proposed on the basis of the BSC concept. With this in mind, we can direct our study to mapping out different success factors and investigate whether the BSC has a paramount influence in this regard. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the use of the BSC. Delimitations: This study will not focus on the BSC and the problem with implementation; we are only interested in examining the success factors that can come about when using the BSC. We will also solely investigate organizations in Sweden. Method: This study has assumed a qualitative approach in order to evaluate the use of the BSC. Primary sources have been collected through personal interviews with respondents. Employees working within different regions have been interviewed in order to make it possible to carry out an analysis regarding how success factors related to the use of the BSC has been valued amongst the respondents of Nordea. Further, this investigation will also contain interviews with respondents of Handelsbanken of who are acting as a control group with the aim of comparing Nordea to a non-BSC user. Results and conclusions: The results of this study show that there are differences in opinions amongst the respondents within Nordea regarding whether the BSC concept lead to the investigated success factors. Handelsbanken agreed upon that their system of control positively contributes to the examined success factors. As such, we have concluded with the fact that the BSC may not be of such superior tool of which is leading to successes; or, that the BSC may be more valuable and popular within certain regions than within others. Proposals regarding further research: During the time when this thesis was carried out we found it interesting to further examine the following: (a) if there are more success factors that the BSC may contribute to; (b) a survey study can be carried out in order to statistically secure our results empirically, and (c) if there are other relations that may exist between, for instance, how two success factors may affect each other or if two different control systems together within the same company is leading to certain success factors.