Performance Measurement : A study of financial and non-financial measures in two logistics oriented companies.

Abstract: The purpose of this Bachelor Thesis is to study performance measurement within two lo-gistics companies and how they balance financial and non-financial performance measures. The study takes a qualitative approach to find out how, and also why the two selected logis-tics companies handle performance measurement the way they do. Current discussions on the topic of performance measurement involve whether smaller companies can benefit from measuring non-financial aspects of its business and develop measurement systems such as the Balance Scorecard, or whether this is a waste of a small companies’ scarce resources and is something that can best be utilized by larger companies with more resources. Some au-thors argue concerning performance measurements that size influence the firm’s controlling systems, as larger firms tend to rely more on formal administrative control while small and medium sized companies could therefore be seen as having a more informal administrative control. According to the initial survey done in this study company size seemed to be re-lated to the extent which companies were involved in performance measurement. The two logistics companies participating in the main study are Hemglass and Kronans Droghandel. KD work deliberately with performance measurements based on long-term thinking in connection to their strategy while Hemglass doesn't work with these issues to the same extent. In accordance to our findings in this study Kaplan & Norton (1996) state that the major expected benefits and reasons for using both financial and non-financial measures materialize when the relationships between the two are understood. These rela-tionships can be hard to establish, some links are more obvious than others, but if this can be managed the performance measurement efforts will be more fruitful.