Strategic responses to Performance Measurement in Nonprofit ...

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A second much smaller exploratory study looks at the implementation of the balanced
scorecard as a popular strategic performance measurement system in 20 non-profit
organisations. Again, non-profits in the German health and social care sectors were chosen, in
order to find out how well advanced the balanced scorecards they had implemented really are.
Not surprisingly, Kaplan regards the implementation of the balanced scorecard in non-profits
at least as beneficial as in the private sector (Kaplan 1999, 2001 and 2002). According to
Kaplan “society‟s „third sector‟ will become far more efficient in delivering benefits to
society“ (Kaplan 2002: 6) with a balanced scorecard.
While the balanced scorecard by Kaplan and Norton is one of the most popular management
tools and technologies-in-action (e.g. Andon et al. 2005, Bedford et al. 2008, Wu and Hung
2008) there is little empirical evidence about the utilization of the balanced scorecard in the
non-profit sector. Although there is body of research focuses on the implementation of the
balanced scorecard in the health care sector in general (e.g. Zelman et al. 2003, Urrutia and
Eriksen 2005, Kocakühlah and Austill 2007, Gurd and Gao 2008), research that goes beyond
single case best practices in the nonprofit sector are rare. Empirical studies that compare real
life experience made with the balanced scorecard across various industries within the non-
profit sector are very scare. Therefore, a part of the paper will be dedicated to presenting and
discussing the experience of 20 German non-profit organisations, which have worked with the
balanced scorecard. By providing comparative empirical results the paper aims to augment the
empirical research in this field (Greiling 2010). Such a research is highly desirable but rather
research-intensive and difficult to handle across the sectors. This issue was stressed by
various authors (e.g. Speckbacher et al. 2003, Bedford et al. 2008, Grud and Gao 2008,
Greiling 2010).
As empirical research (e.g Hall et. al 2003, Zimmerman and Stevens (2006), Campos et al.
(2010), Greiling 2010) demonstrate non-profit-organisations tend to have weak performance
measurement systems and the implementation of the balanced scorecards is often problematic