The balanced scorecard: Judgmental effects of common and unique performance measures

The balanced scorecard is a new tool that complements traditional measures of business unit performance. The scorecard contains a diverse set of perfo rmance measures, including financial performance, customer relations, inter nal business processes, and learning and growth. Advocates of the balanced scorecard suggest that each unit in the organization should develop and use its own scorecard, choosing measures that capture the unit's business stra tegy. Our study examines judgmental effects of the balanced scorecard-speci fically, how balanced scorecards that include some measures common to multi ple units and other measures that are unique to a particular unit affect su periors' evaluations of that unit's performance. Our test shows that only t he common measures affect the superiors' evaluations. We discuss the implic ations of this result for research and practice.