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Conceptual Foundations of
the Balanced Scorecard
Robert S. Kaplan
Working Paper
10-074
Copyright © 2010 by Robert S. Kaplan
Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and
discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working
papers are available from the author.
Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard1
Robert S. Kaplan
Harvard Business School, Harvard University
1
Paper originally prepared for C. Chapman, A. Hopwood, and M. Shields (eds.), Handbook of
Management Accounting Research: Volume 3 (Elsevier, 2009).
1
Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard
Abstract
David Norton and I introduced the Balanced Scorecard in a 1992 Harvard Business
Review article (Kaplan & Norton, 1992). The article was based on a multi-company research
project to study performance measurement in companies whose intangible assets played a central
role in value creation (Nolan Norton Institute, 1991). Norton and I believed that if companies
were to improve the management of their intangible assets, they had to integrate the measurement
of intangible assets into their management systems.
After publication of the 1992 HBR article, several companies quickly adopted the
Balanced Scorecard giving us deeper and broader insights into its power and potential. During the
next 15 years, as it was adopted by thousands of private, public, and nonprofit enterprises around
the world, we extended and broadened the concept into a management tool for describing,
communicating and implementing strategy. This paper describes the roots and motivation for the
original Balanced Scorecard article as well as the subsequent innovations that connected it to a
larger management literature.
2
“Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard”
Robert S. Kaplan
David Norton and I introduced the Balanced Scorecard in a 1992 Harvard
Business Review...