Validating the balanced scorecard framework for nonprofit organisations: an empirical study involving Australasian healthcare

Abstract

In this paper, we theorise and empirically validate the nonprofit version of the balanced scorecard (BSC) using Australasian nonprofit healthcare organisations (NPHOs) as the sampling frame. We used 232 valid responses (collected via a questionnaire that captures the conceptual domain of the 9 constructs of our model) to test our hypotheses using partial-least-squares-based structural equation modelling (PLSBSEM). Our study brings clarity to the nonprofit BSC as we explain how organisational Mission drives the Strategy (which in turn drives the system) to achieve the stakeholder (Client, People, and the Donors) outcomes, en route the application of our mixed method research to generate rich data to plug other gaps in the BSC, such as omission of people (as a key stakeholder group) and inadequate explication of the financial perspective, in a nonprofit context. Our hypotheses (which are ground in the literature) were supported by the data and we discussed the implications of the findings from a theoretical and practical standpoint to guide future research. Our study is the first to undertake the development of a PM framework specific to Australasian NPHOs (to a level that it can be readily used by the practitioners).Our findings are analytically generalisable across NPHOs in the UK and other similar regions/countries.

Keywords:

• performance measurement (PM)
• balanced scorecard (BSC)
• nonprofit healthcare organisations (NPHOs)
• Australasia
• structural equation modelling (SEM)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.