Usage of the balanced scorecard and employee engagement among South African software developers

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Today’s organisations operate in a knowledge economy, wherein the knowledge of employees is a key enabler of the organisation’s value for its customers and subsequently its shareholders. These organisations have been advised to seek the engagement of their employees in order to succeed at implementing their strategies. A Balanced scorecard (BSC) has been promoted as tool to operationalise strategy, ultimately intended to improve organisational performance. A number of studies have been carried out to assess whether organisations that have adopted the BSC as strategy implementation tool, have reaped the promised improvement in financial performance but there is a scarcity of quantitative studies that have assessed the impact of the BSC adoption on employees’ levels of engagement. This study aims to identify how the usage of the BSC has contributed to the South African software developers’ feelings of engagement. An internet-based survey containing items assessing how the BSC is used and antecedents for employee engagement was circulated to software developers in South Africa. The data collected was subjected to an Inter-Battery Factor Analysis (IBFA) method wherein items that correlated significantly between the measures of feelings of employee engagement and BSC usage were isolated and analysed. The key findings: Although the organisations approached their BSC adoption is a manner that was agreeable to its software developers, the levels of engagement where not necessarily improved as a result. Implications of the findings are discussed. The key message: Efforts to engage employees can definitely not take a one-size-fits-all approach, which typical involves correct and even consistent application of processes (i.e. BSC adoption) but requires customization to prevailing organisational climate that includes culture and characteristics of employees.