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Updating the Balanced Scorecard for Triple Bottom Line Strategies

By: Robert S. Kaplan and David McMillan
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
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Abstract

Many companies are now attempting to achieve triple bottom line performance on financial, environmental, and societal metrics. Successful strategies for such performance, however, generally require new relationships among multiple players in multiple sectors across a company’s supply chain for products and talent. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC), originally developed to describe and implement a single organization’s strategy, needs to be adapted to reflect such multi-stakeholder strategies for triple bottom line performance. The Financial perspective is replaced by “Outcomes” to encompass financial, environmental, and societal metrics; Customer becomes “Stakeholders” to reflect the interests of the multiple participants in the ecosystem; and Learning & Growth becomes “Enablers” to include the new capabilities for collaboration and alignment. The paper motivates and illustrates the new framework with examples from innovative agribusiness ecosystems.

Keywords

Balanced Scorecard; Adaptation; Environmental Sustainability; Social Issues; Performance; Strategy

Citation

Kaplan, Robert S., and David McMillan. "Updating the Balanced Scorecard for Triple Bottom Line Strategies." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-028, August 2020.

About The Author

Robert S. Kaplan

Accounting and Management
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