An Investigation of the Balanced-Scorecard's Applications for Performance Measurement of the Firms Accepted in the Tehran Exchange Market

The major purpose of this study is providing a suitable response to this inquiry: What performance evaluation criterions are currently prevalent by various companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE)? And to what extent, do they have adapted the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) mechanism for performance evaluation of their operations and departments? The significant objectives of this research are: 1) seeking to exploit practical performance evaluation techniques, and 2) reporting the BSC'S adaption among the TSE firms. In effect, four perspectives of the BSC, promoted by Kaplan & Norton (1992, 1996 & 2004), including financial, customer, internal process, and learning & growth, are extracted in the framework of different hypothesis. The population of this research encompasses all firms listed in the TSE for the year 2006. Totally, 200 qualified and active firms were identified, and a valid and reliable questionnaire was conveyed to them. However, only 68 of the questionnaires were complete and, therefore could be extricated in this study. The generated data were analyzed by t-test, binominal test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) statistical techniques. The major findings of the study revealed that the most dominant traditional performance evaluation measures employed by the TSE firms are: 1) "Net income" (35.3%), 2) "Operating income" (32.4%), and 3) "Total income" (23.5%) accordingly, and only 4.4% of them are exploiting "cash flows" and "ROI" as their first priority. In addition, 38.2% of the respondents have indicated that they are utilizing "Operating income" as the second priority, and 39.7% of them are exerting "Net income" as the third priority. On the other hand, almost 92.6% of selected companies are not explicitly engaged with the BSC. However, most of them are embarking some non-financial measures in their performance evaluation systems. Age, educational degree, field of the study, and years of practical experience of the respondents were not statistically significant in providing the aforementioned results, but "organizational position" demonstrated a significant effect on the BSC'S adaption.