The Balanced Scorecard's Missing Link to Compensation: A Literature Review and An Agenda for Future Research

Purpose – This paper aims to review the literature on the balanced scorecard (BSC) system. The BSC may well be one of the most popular performance measurement systems, but this is not synonymous with successful. The inventors of the BSC, Kaplan and Norton, actually emphasize that a BSC can only really impact the organizational performance if it is linked to the actors’ intrinsic and extrinsic incentives. As BSC has existed for more than 20 years, the authors find it relevant to survey the extant literature which elaborates on the BSC-incentives link within organizations. Design/methodology/approach – This paper identifies 117 empirical studies from leading academic journals published between 1992 and 2012 and then assesses 30 of these studies, which present the BSC-compensation link within the BSC literature. The authors analyze both research design (authors’ perspective) and the actual findings in the field (organizations’ perspective). Findings – First, it was found that only 30 of 117 empirical studies...

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