Stakeholder reporting process: a link to balance the balanced scorecard

In strategic management one of the vexed issues is how to include stakeholder input into strategy to enable more effective and accountable implementation. Implementation tools such as the Balanced Scorecard appear to be popular with organisations with widespread applications yet most stakeholders do not feature as an important balance. Should stakeholders be part of the Balanced Scorecard process? This paper attempts to create a conceptual link between Stakeholder Reporting and Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard. From a review of Balanced Scorecard literature and case studies, stakeholder input is often restricted to some internal parties who could jeopardise an organisation’s strategy implementation. Other stakeholders are often ignored or marginalised by the strategy implementation process. This paper reviews stakeholder models, and their limitations. An examination of the adaptation of Stakeholder Reporting, (an auditing model) as a framework to include stakeholders in the balanced scorecard is proffered. Stakeholder reporting develops a process to link Balanced Scorecard with strategy resultant from critical stakeholders. This conceptual model provides more balance with different stakeholder groups to ensure strategy implementation is followed with balanced measures.