The Balanced Scorecard: Fashion or Virus?

Dag Øivind Madsen and Kåre Slåtten
Additional contact information
Dag Øivind Madsen: School of Business and Faculty of Social Sciences, Buskerud and Vestfold University College, Bredalsveien 14, 3511 Hønefoss, Norway
Kåre Slåtten: School of Business and Faculty of Social Sciences, Buskerud and Vestfold University College, Bredalsveien 14, 3511 Hønefoss, Norway

Administrative Sciences, 2015, vol. 5, issue 2, 1-35

Abstract: The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a one of the most popular and contagious management ideas of our time. In previous research the diffusion and institutionalization of the BSC has been viewed through different theoretical lenses, most notably the management fashion perspective. Recently the virus perspective has been introduced as an alternative theory of how management ideas spread, but so far no study has applied this theory in the context of the BSC. In this paper we show that the fashion and virus perspectives provide complementary insights into the diffusion and institutionalization of the BSC. The fashion perspective is particularly well suited for explaining the infectiousness of the BSC and the ways in which organizations are exposed to the BSC idea. The virus theory can better explain how the BSC idea is implemented as a practice in organizations, and the different trajectories that the BSC idea may take in different contexts. A combination of these two perspectives provides a fuller picture of the diffusion and institutionalization of the BSC.

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; management idea; virus; fashion; diffusion; institutionalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/5/2/90/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/5/2/90/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:5:y:2015:i:2:p:90-124:d:50790

Access Statistics for this article

Administrative Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Nancy Ma

More articles in Administrative Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().