Balanced Scorecard: A Literature Review to Trace its Trajectory in the Public Administration Domain

ABSTRACT

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has been a strategic and performance management tool for 30 years, initially for for-profit organizations but later adopted by other types. This study reviews its use by public administration scholars, analyzing articles from the Web of Science database with bibliometric tools and Artificial Intelligence for lexical and semantic analysis. The analysis concluded that BSC is mainly used in local government for performance management and measurement. The study enhances theoretical understanding by exploring BSC’s application in the public sector, its effectiveness, distinctions from for-profit use, and identifying areas for further research.

KEYWORDS:

• Balanced scorecard
• performance management
• public administration
• bibliometric studies
• natural language processing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2024.2376053

Notes

1. Journal Citation Report published by Clarivate and available at its website http://jcr-clarivate.ez54.