A Balanced Scorecard for the Humanitarian Sector? Adaptability of the Balanced Scorecard Model to Sector-Wide Performance Management in Humanitarian Aid Feasibility and Implications

Background: Today, performance management in the humanitarian sector comprises a multitude of different initiatives and approaches that seek to improve efficiency of project management, foster cooperation, or establish accountability through standards, tools, frameworks and participative approaches. This multitude has led scholars to call for comprehensive, integrated, and system-wide views on, approaches to, and frameworks for performance management. This paper ascertains the applicability of the Balanced Scorecard model to the system-wide management of performance for the humanitarian sector. It combines the concepts of performance management, the generic Balanced Scorecard for businesses and further approaches to extend the Balanced Scorecard for cross-company networks as well as to apply the Balanced Scorecard to the non-profit and public sector. These concepts are discussed against the background of existing performance initiatives and approaches in the humanitarian sector.

Results: The Balanced Scorecard works on the implicit assumption that all aspects of performance are measurable to a certain extent. The humanitarian sector shows characteristics that make it nearly impossible to isolate the contribution of humanitarian interventions to the overall mission to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity, rendering the Balanced Scorecard inapplicable to system-wide performance management in humanitarian aid.