Embedding sustainability into business strategy: the role of the balanced scorecard

The paper aims to analyse the role played by performance measurement systems (PMSs), particularly the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) model, in aligning the company business strategy and its social strategy.Actually, PMSs play a fundamental role for the implementation of a social strategy: in the organizations those objectives are pursued and those actions are implemented which managers are responsible for and upon which they are evaluated and rewarded. The objective of the paper is twofold: on one side, it aims to present and discuss the different approaches that companies can use in order to manage the complex relationship between business strategy and social strategy; on the other side, the paper is focused on the role played by PMSs, particularly the BSC model, in supporting the implementation of the defined social strategy. The research method is based on the analysis of two case studies of European firms, that made different choices with regard to the relationship between business strategy and social strategy. Accordingly, the two companies show some differences with respect to: the structure and content of the implemented BSC, the characteristic of its implementation process, the role played by the organizational departments involved and the relationship with traditional planning and control systems mainly centred on business variables. Moreover, research findings show that the BSC is not perceived and used as a static tool, but, instead, a life cycle approach seems to emerge. At the beginning, when sustainability has to be embedded into the organization and it has to be recognized as a corporate priority, the BSC plays a relevant role among the firm’s managerial mechanisms. Once the transition has started and sustainability has gradually been incorporated into the organizational culture, systems and actions, the routine seems to be managed by some simpler tools, like a set of KPIs.