LINKING COMPREHENSIVE PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT TO THE BALANCED SCORECARD: EVIDENCE FROM HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL |
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| Authors: | Margaret Woods Suzana Grubnic |
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| Institution: | 1. Associate Professor and Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at Nottingham University Business School.;2. The authors are respectively Associate Professor and Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at Nottingham University Business School. They are grateful to the BAA Special Interest Group on Public Services Accounting Research, funded by CIPFA, for their continued financial support;3. managers at Hertfordshire County Council who have given of their time and access to documentation;4. participants at the 4th EIASM International Conference on Accounting, Auditing and Management in Public Sector Reforms, 7–9 September, 2006, Siena;5. and the anonymous referees for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the paper. |
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| Abstract: | Over the course of the last twenty years there has been a growing academic interest in performance management, particularly in respect of the evolution of new techniques and their resulting impact. One important theoretical development has been the emergence of multidimensional performance measurement models that are potentially applicable within the public sector. Empirically, academic researchers are increasingly supporting the use of such models as a way of improving public sector management and the effectiveness of service provision ( Mayston, 1985 ; Pollitt, 1986 ; Bates and Brignall, 1993 ; and Massey, 1999 ). This paper seeks to add to the literature by using both theoretical and empirical evidence to argue that CPA, the external inspection tool used by the Audit Commission to evaluate local authority performance management, is a version of the Balanced Scorecard which, when adapted for internal use, may have beneficial effects. After demonstrating the parallels between the CPA framework and Kaplan and Norton's public sector Balanced Scorecard (BSC), we use a case study of the BSC based performance management system in Hertfordshire County Council to demonstrate the empirical linkages between a local scorecard and CPA. We conclude that CPA is based upon the BSC and has the potential to serve as a springboard for the evolution of local authority performance management systems. |
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| Keywords: | performance management CPA balanced scorecard |
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