The Implementation and Impacts of Balanced Scorecard on Shared Service Units: A Car Dealership Case

Abstract

Many organizations applied the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to their shared service units (SSUs) in order to increase the value of SSUs; however, few studies show the implementation and effects of BSC on the SSUs in real cases. This study examines two issues: First, we illustrate the case related to the implementation of BSC for the SSUs in a large automobile dealership in Taiwan. This case includes six stages in implementing BSC for SSUs which are “service agreement”, “internal transfer pricing”, “internal customer feedback”, and “SSU income statement”…etc. Second, we examine the influences of BSC on employees’ cognition and behavior, and on the roles and positions of SSUs by conducting two survey and interview employees from the SSUs. The results show that most employees in SSUs strongly sense and understand organizational strategy; however, SSUs’ employees do not really change their behavior on their daily job after one-year implementation of BSC. In addition, we find that SSUs change their focus on revenue, cost, and customer orientation; however, SSUs do not significantly increase revenue or decrease cost after two-year implementation of BSC.