Application of Balanced Scorecard in the University System of Sri Lanka

Application of Balanced Scorecard in the University System  of Sri Lanka

In today's  global completion  every organization is trying to provide quality service to win the competition. like other organization universities also focusing on ensuring academic excellence. Therefore universities are always trying to recognize the performance improvement measurements to achieve their predetermined goals and objectives. For this purpose universities can use Balanced Scorecard model. Therefore, the BSC focus on the fact that university required a balance between both financial and non financial measures.

The Customer Perspective

When University consider customer perspective it should identify its potential stakeholder and their expectations clearly. In University there are few customer groups such as students, staff, public, government and donors so under the customer perspective each and every stakeholders interest to be addressed. The customer perspective can accomplish using performance indicators such as  quality of graduate, quality of service provided community, etc. In Universities students are the main stakeholders. So the university has to produce quality graduate who possess good knowledge, skills and attitudes which match with job market requirements. Also  Universities can develop community based extra activities to achieve interest of community.

ex. Universities can conduct seminars for grade five scholarship examination, G.C.E.O/L and A/L examination, organize blood donation camp and medical camps.

The Internal Process Perspective

Internal process perspective measures the performance of the internal work and procedures of the university. This highly focus on the quality of academic learning process, increase infrastructure facilities and maintain good relationship with students and university administration to minimize conflicts. The considering this perspective may leads to achieve productivity.

The Financial Perspective (FP)

In traditional perspective university measures net operating ratio, research funding effectiveness by focusing cost and revenue. Under the BSC methodology university can initiate programme’s such as external degree programmes and post graduates progarmmes rather than depending on treasury. And the funds received from those programmes can be allocated to extra activities and staff development activities. Also those self generated funds can be used to allow staff members to participate for foreign conference and training with the purpose of getting utmost benefit from them to the university. Also university have to attract research grants.

The Learning and Growth Perspective (LGP)

Learning and growth perspective of the BSC attend to the universities competence to uphold high performance levels over time. This has focus on enhancing working environment,  self-confidence of staff , professional and personal development of staff

, quality assurance and effective use of technology. In university system this can be accomplish through encouraging staff  to start higher studies by funding course fee by university , can arrange varies staff development programmes with the assist of  Staff Development Centre, encourage academic staff to conduct research.

Conclusion and Recommendation

In early days most public universities mainly focus on the improving the graduate employability rate by ensuring academic excellence but with the environment changing rapidly and expectation of stakeholders are ever increasing universities also focus more on not only academic excellence but also service excellence, managerial enrolment growth, staff development, and cost effectiveness and increase revenue. Because when we concerning higher education sector quality of educational service and stakeholder satisfaction are most vital factors to be considered. Accordingly to achieve those expectations university should develop best performance indicators. For this purpose balance scorecard can be used as a conceptual framework which can be use in translating universities strategic objectives into a set of performance indicators. Rather than only  focusing on operational performance of the university and use of quantitative financial measures, the BSC approach associate the university's strategy to measurable goals and objectives in four perspectives namely financial, customer, internal process and learning and growth. Also once the BSC is developed for the university it is essential to have continuous improvements and enhancements.