Notes on the history of the Balanced Scorecard

 In reference to the link, there are a couple interesting points for take-away. 

The balanced scorecard, and its use, comes from the idea that the way organizations operate is in fact imbalanced. That is to say, organizations being profit-driven is too one-track-minded. There are other dimensions and important aspects that an organization needs to consider. This makes sense, as being purely profit-driven is the kindling to pure speculation. 

The philosophy of the balanced scorecard is to start from the inner processes, which would eventually lead to good finance (or financial stewardship). Financial stewardship is an interesting concept introduced here, as it takes into account that profit is not to be optimized. In fact, the article references several organizations in which profit is not  optimized, specifically governmental organizations and non-profit organizations. 

There are four dimensions that are commonly used and widely accepted: financial, customer and stakeholder, internal processes, organizational capacity (learning and growth). Each dimension is tracked and evaluated to articulate an organization's values. 

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