The Balanced Scorecard in Portuguese Private Organizations: A Descriptive Analysis

The understanding that the existing models applied to business performance evaluation were obsolete and could induce companies to taking erroneous decisions led to the development of information and management control systems that reflect the evolution of the non-financial or qualitative key success factors, such as the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). Nowadays, the BSC is one of the most popular management accounting tools. However, reports of high rates of failure require a more close analysis at the challenges and key issues with which various private organizations were confronted in its implementation. Consequently, even after more than two decades after the creation of the model, and despite the introduction of some improvements, investment in BSC projects within the corporate and academic environments can still be confirmed. Thus, in order to find out if Portuguese organizations know and implement the BSC, we sent a questionnaire to 549 private organizations, obtaining a response rate of 28.2%. The results suggest that although the majority of respondents know the BSC, its implementation in these organizations is limited and very recent.