Prioritization of BSC strategic Goals of Higher EducationInstitutions using the AHP, ANP and PageRank Centrality

Strategic planning using the balanced scorecard (BSC) is a standard activity in many higher education institutions (HEIs). In BSC, goals are deployed into BSC perspectives. In non-profit HEIs, those perspectives are (from bottom to top): the finance perspective, the learning and growth perspective, the internal processes perspective, the costumer perspective, and the mission perspective. In terms of forprofit HEIs (e.g. private universities), the finance perspective is at the top of the map (rather than the mission perspective). In the current literature, we can also find totally new BSC perspectives that are adjusted to the particular HEI’s needs. Nevertheless, when a HEI’s administration selects a specific, strategic map design, they place strategic goals into the map and connect them with respect to the existence of the influences between goals. In theory, a goal from a particular perspective can influence any other goal from the same perspective, as well as any goal from any other perspective that is above its perspective. Following the creation of the strategic map of goals, there is often a request to prioritize goals within the strategic map to determine the most crucial goals. In this paper, we present several possible means of prioritizing BSC goals. Three of them are the direct applications of three specific methods: the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), the analytic network process (ANP), and the PageRank centrality. Additionally, we propose the use of an integrated approach of two of them. The main disadvantage of applying the AHP is that influences between goals are generally not included in the goals’ priorities calculations. The main disadvantage of the ANP is that many BSC goals will weigh 0.0, because the graph that is associated with the BSC strategic map of goals is almost always reducible. This issue can be solved through the application of the PageRank centrality. The use of this method ensures that the original BSC map will become irreducible. However, applying the ANP or PageRank only considers the influences between goals in a BSC map and does not take the importance of each goal to the HEI into consideration. To ensure that both goals are achieved, we proposed and applied an integrated approach that combines the AHP with PageRank centrality. In this paper, all the aforementioned concepts are applied and demonstrated in the case of the BSC strategic map of goals for the Faculty of Organization and Informatics at the University of Zagreb and can be applied to other HEIs’ strategic maps of goals.