The Balanced Scorecard as an Intellectual Technology

In this article, we focus on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a discursive practice. Instead of asking whether the figures in the BSC correspond to reality, or whether they serve the users’ purposes and behave according to their intentions, we have chosen to analyse how the BSC partakes in shaping the world it is intended to reflect. Two case studies will be presented in order to demonstrate how the BSC works in this respect. In the first case, the main issue is how the BSC both naturalizes alleged cognitive limitations among managers and induces them to replace everyday knowledge with highly selective representations. After that, the BSC is shown to operate simultaneously as a straitjacket on strategic intentions and as a constituent of new patterns of action—but in ways that are loosely coupled to strategic intentions.