DBA defense at MSM: extending the Balance Scorecard approach to performance management

Mr. Tarek Safwat successfully defended his Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) thesis on “A Complement to the Balanced Scorecard: A Framework Considering Scenario Planning and Complexity” at Maastricht School of Management (MSM) on 26 January 2016.

In his research Mr. Tarek Safwat describes the Balanced Scorecard as a popular concept for performance management. However, it has “five limitations such as focus on unidirectional causality, unable to distinguish delays between actions and their impact on performance, have a dearth of validation capabilities, insufficiently integrate strategy with operational measures and suffer from internal biases”. Undesired people’s behavior and attitude could form a clear obstacle to strategy execution. Ignoring such resistance may escalate it to the level that could affect performance and initiatives’ results. The research presents a framework adopted from Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard Execution Premium Process. It adds Scenario Planning and Complexity Management as two new stages to address some of the Balanced Scorecard’s limitations.

It was found that, academics and advisors who participated in the First Delphi Survey agreed upon the framework and the concept of complementing the Balanced Scorecard with Scenario Planning and Complexity management. It was demonstrated in real life practice that it is possible to implement the new framework; this was done in a full scale case study. Practitioners who participated in the Second Delphi Survey also agreed upon the framework.