Strategic responses to Performance Measurement in Nonprofit ...

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14 sport clubs. The proposed performance indicators are industry-specific and the specific external and internal challenges non-profit organisation faces in the chosen area are addressed in more detail. Both generations try to assure the reader that, in general, there are no reasons why the balanced scorecard cannot be implemented in the non-profit sector (Greiling 2010). There are numerous single case descriptions, which report in a positive way about actual balanced scorecard implementation in the non-profit world. The Mayo Clinic, the Special Olympics, Duke Children‟s Hospital, the Boston Lyric Opera, New Profit Inc. or United Way of South Eastern New England or the Cattaraugus County Rehabilitation Centre may serve as American examples (Kaplan and Norton 1996, Curtright et al. 2000, Kaplan 2001, Meliones 2002, Martello et al. 2008). The Boston Lyric Opera is an example where the application of the balanced scorecard has even made it as a case study into a standard text book on management control systems (Merchant and van der Stede 2007). The Diaconic Foundation of Neuendettelsau or dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church are among the German single case descriptions (Breyer and Horneber 2002, Mertes 2002). All these single case presentations fail to give evidence in a comparative way. Even if the authors include more than one case in their publication (e.g. Kaplan 2001) they do not compare benefits and challenges across different organisations. The single case presentations often include general challenges which the specific non-profit organisation form faces (e.g. unclear strategy, gaps in the existing strategy, lack of clear priorities, declining quality, loss of members, lack of financial resources) and how these challenges were subsequently successfully resolved with the balanced scorecard as a strategic management accounting instrument (Greiling 2010). A non-profit-context adapted technology-in-action is presented at the costs of a deeper, theory-driven reflection. If we look beyond these two generations of normative proposals the body of research is getting much smaller. For the for-profit sector, a growing body of empirical studies does exist conducting quantitative or qualitative research (e.g. Malmi 2001, Bischof 2002, Speckbacher
15 et al. 2003, Bedford et al. 2008, Schaeffer and Matlachowsky 2008). It predominately focuses on very large organisations. The experience with the balanced scorecard in the for-profit sector is described as mixed (Ittner et al. 2003, Bedford et al. 2008, Schaeffer and Matlachowsky 2008, Ittner and Larcker 2009). Challenges reported include how to link the performance indicators to an incentive system or how to make it a strategic management system. The implementation is a time-consuming process and difficulties were encountered with respect to cause-and-effect relationships (Greiling 2010). Schaeffer and Matlachowsky (2008) report on cases where fully-fledged balanced scorecards were abolished due to a change in the top management or because the gathering and monitoring of the balanced scorecard indicators were seen as a no-value-adding burden. Due to the difference in size, number of employees and general strategic orientation, the findings from those studies cannot be transferred one-to-one from for-profit to non-profit organisations. If we look at empirical papers which go beyond single case studies (for a literature review see Urrutia and Scott 2005, Gurd and Gao 2008, Kocakülah and Austill 2007, Greiling 2010) the body of research gets very small for health and social non-profits. While there is no research which focuses explicitly on the implementation of the balanced scorecard in the social sector, a few empirical studies do focus on the balanced scorecard in the health care sector (e.g. Chan and Ho 2000, Hermann et al. 2000, Aidenmark 2001, Kershaw and Kerschaw 2001, Pink et al. 2001, Voelker et al. 2001, Randor and Lowell 2003a and 20003b, Zelman et al. 2003). With respect to the non-profits in health care only very few examples of comparative studies (Inamdar and Kaplan 2002, Contrast Management Consulting 2002, Greiling 2009) could be identified. While the two last mentioned do not focus exclusively on the balanced scorecard, Inamdar and Kaplan (2002) interviewed nine managers of non-profit hospitals which were in an early stage of implementing the balanced scorecard. The introduction of the balanced scorecard took an average of two years and pay-off of this time-consuming endeavour was a measurable performance improvement (Inamdar and Kaplan 2002: 194). According to these
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