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Today's insistence on demonstrated organizational performance is not limited to private-sector corporations. Public and nonprofit agencies are also finding that, as financial resources decrease and demand for results increases, they too must institute performance goals along with programs and processes to consistently progress toward those goals.

Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step for Government and Nonprofit Agencies identifies the opportunities-and helps eliminate the obstacles-of bringing the popular and proven Balanced Scorecard approach to public and nonprofit organizations.

This results-focused and practical book provides you with:
- Fundamentals of the Balanced Scorecard concept
- Advice on how to alter the "geography" of the balanced scorecard to fit public and nonprofit agencies
- Techniques for developing strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards throughout your organization
- Tools and templates to link the Balanced Scorecard with key management processes

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Paul R. Niven's recent book "Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step: Maximizing Performance and Main-taining Results"
Ever since Robert Kaplan and David Norton developed the Balanced Scorecard, business thought leaders have been spawning myriad books, articles and seminars dedicated to the concept's implementation. But few products focus on the organizational activities needed to build a successful scorecard system.

Helping businesses effect these organizational changes is the goal of this book. It is a comprehensive guide to translating business strategy into performance targets, measures and initiatives in the Balanced Scorecard's financial, customer, internal process and employee perspectives. Niven draws on his experience rolling out a scorecard-based performance management system at Nova Scotia Power, a Canadian electric utility, to illustrate many of his points.

Niven's book, which is useful for organizations at any stage of balanced scorecard development, takes readers from determining their performance management objectives to testing their mission to placing the Balanced Scorecard at the center of their management system. The book provides a detailed review and description of the elements necessary to construct a scorecard -- a must for businesses starting out on the journey. With those building blocks in place, Niven then offers an in-depth view of what it takes to select the right performance indicators; he explains how to narrow a company's current stable of metrics down to a select few which weave together in a series of cause-and-effect linkages. He also offers tips for sustaining success.

If you've developed a scorecard measurement system but have yet to transform it into a successful management system, you can benefit from the techniques and advice that Niven presents. Use his ideas to audit your systems, then tweak processes to improve the effectiveness of your organization's performance management.

Cambridge University economist Hertz asserts that Reagan's and Thatcher's brand of free market capitalism has had dire social and political repercussions, although it has triumphed as the dominant world ideology and brought prosperity to many. She sensibly argues that with government in retreat from its traditional rule-setter role, multinational corporations have grown so powerful (51 of the hundred biggest economies in the world are corporations) that they determine political policies rather than operate subject to them. Market success may rule, but Hertz laments that the state, in appearing to serve business, may be nullifying democracy's social contract to represent and protect the rights of all citizens equally. WTO protests and activism reinforce her sense of growing political discontent not only about income distribution effects (97% of the increase in income over the past 20 years in the U.S. has gone to the top 20% of the families) but also about human rights issues. Campaign finance realities, declining voter participation, increasing alienation and terrorism amid glowing corporate results represent an urgent cry for reform to Hertz. Since corporations are not designed and cannot be expected to serve a general population's social and political needs, she argues that democracies need to move toward a realignment between the state's political power and the corporations' economic power so that all people have a positive stake in world economic progress. Hertz maps out a proposed agenda, and her eloquent call to action deserves the attention of every concerned citizen of our troubled world.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.