The Balanced Scorecard

International Journal of Productivity Management and Assessment Technologies Volume 5 • Issue 2 • July-December 2017

The Balanced Scorecard:

Keeping Updated and Aligned with Today´s Business Trends Jorge Gomes, ISEG - Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal Mário Romão, ISEG - Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

ABSTRACT Organizations are challenged to develop new organizational skills such as flexibility or expertise in order to quickly respond to changes in technology, competition and customer preferences. Companies cannot be competitive or successful if their business and information systems and technology (IS/ IT) strategies are not strategic aligned. Nowadays, the importance of intangible assets is higher than traditional physical assets and performance measurement tools need to capture this new reality. Measuring organizational performance is a continuous challenge for both managers and researchers. Balanced scorecard (BSC) is a powerful tool that gives to managers a fast, but comprehensive view of the business including operational measures on customer satisfaction, organization’s innovation, activities improvement, as well as financial measurements. In this paper the authors address the BSC and promote the discussion about the strengths and the limitations and pointing out new developments to overcome the today´s business trends. Keywords Balanced Scorecard, IS/IT Investments, Performance Measurements, Strategic Alignment, Strategy Map

INTRODUCTION Organizations are required to act in the best of their abilities in the face of competition resulting from globalization and other market factors (Ashurst & Doherty, 2003). To respond to the constraints of the new business environment, the successful organizations developed three major strategies (Gomes & Romão, 2012): (1) Training employees in the use of Information Systems/IT (IS/IT) to provide organizations of knowledge and responsiveness to answer the pressures to change. (2) Choosing for collaborative platforms involving all relevant stakeholders (customers, suppliers, and employees) in the business process. (3) Finding ways of obtaining superior performance using the frameworks to assist management processes. The inability to realize the “real” value from IS/IT investments lies mainly in the lack of alignment between the business and the strategies for IS/IT (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1999). Strategic alignment positively influences Information Technology (IT) effectiveness (Porter, 1987; Galliers, 1991), leading to greater business profitability (Luftman, 1996). From the perspective of IS/IT, the problems of non-alignment with the business strategy typically result in reactive postures against IS/IT technologies being seen as a cost center and not as a strategic “business partner”. From the business point of view, the non-alignment of IS/IT result in a decreasing income arising from investments in technology and a reduction of competitive capabilities for the organization DOI: 10.4018/IJPMAT.2017070101 Copyright © 2017, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

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(Tallon, Kraemer, & Gurbaxani, 2000). With the shift to a new business environment with great predominance of intangible assets such as knowledge and innovation, organizations are required to manage environments of great complexity, mobility and uncertainty (Voelpel et al., 2006). Knowledge management becomes an important key driver of organizational performance and a critical tool for organization survival, competitiveness and profitability (Omotayo, 2015). The increasing emphasis on intellectual capital is essential for a proper development of innovative products, distribution, and to improve the market value of the organization (Bose and Thomas, 2007). The impact of market structure on firm performance has been the subject of considerable discussion and debate in strategic management (Porter & Siggelkow, 2008). For many companies, the competitive advantage is seen as a continuous process of performance improvement, looking for best practices and enhancing new capabilities, gaining a return-on-investment (ROI) above the industry average (Porter, 1985) or an implementation of an effective strategy not simultaneously used by current or future competitors Barney (1991). Scholars have extended Resource Based-View (RBV) to dynamic markets (Teece et al., 1997). The rationale is that RBV has not adequately explained how and why certain firms have competitive advantage in situations of rapid and unpredictable change. The search for new products or services and for more efficiently processes and procedures developing the dynamic capabilities to quickly respond to the external challenges and effectively continuous changes, adapting to new industrial trends (Teece et al., 1997). Sustainable competitive advantage depends on the construction and operation of a set of “core competencies” (Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). For managers, the challenge is to identify, develop, protect and provide resources and capabilities in a way that gives the organization a future competitive advantage and, thus, a higher return on capital (Amit & Schoemaker, 1993). THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Business Scorecard (BSC) and Performance Measuring Tools The maintenance of an effective performance management system is a crucial issue to ensure the survival as it plays an important role in leading the organizations. Otley (1999) identified five main set of issues that any organization should addressed: (1) What are the main goals of the organization and how to measure them? (2) What are the strategies and initiatives to establish these goals and how to measure them? (3) What level of performance does the organization needed? (4) What rewards for the achievement of this performance? (5) What are the necessary information flows to enable the organization to learn from its experience. Historically, performance measurement systems have been developed as a means of monitoring and maintaining organizational control to ensure that the proposed strategies are suitable to the proposed objectives (Neely et al., 1997). Some authors argue that non-financial indicators better reflect the investment and the performance of the more intangible aspects, which are good at predicting the future financial performance (Epstein & Manzoni, 1998; Kaplan & Norton, 2004). These intangibles can be a source of sustainable competitive advantage and are the resources that the organization owns that are not easily imitable (Barney, 1991; Marr et al., 2004; Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). Several mistakes are committed by organizations when trying to measure the nonfinancial performance, such as (Ittner & Larcker, 2003): (1) Lack of alignment between measurements with strategy – a key challenge for companies is to determine which non-financial measures need to be implemented. (2) Validate the measurements - do not validate the model, which leads to measure many things, and most of them are irrelevant. (3) Set up the right goals and measures. (4) Wrong measurements – research indicates that 70% of companies used metrics that have no statistical validity. The traditional financial accounting measures can give misleading signals for continuous improvement and innovation in organizations, and are generally non-aligned with the capabilities and skills required for today’s organizations in the preparation of their future (Maltz et al., 2003). 2


Performance measurement system is a balanced and dynamic system that can support the decisionmaking process by gathering, elaborating and analyzing information and have been recognized as fundamental element to improving business performance of the organizations (Neely et al., 2002; Sharma et al., 2005). Through the performance measurement tools, organizations can monitor the implementation of their strategies, thus contributing to organizational success. Recognizing the weaknesses and vagueness of previous management approaches, BSC provides a clear description of what companies should measure to balance the financial perspective. BSC is a multidimensional approach to measure and manage performance that is specifically linked to organizational strategy. Strengths and Limitations of Traditional Measuring Systems: The Balanced Scorecard Organizations must be able to analyze the external market, seize opportunities, and counter threats. There are numerous studies and publications that draw attention to the inability of financial indicators to predict the future and increasingly the needs of the emergence of other indicators, including nonfinancial (Kaplan & Norton, 1992; Simons, 1995; Ittner & Larcker 1998; Neely, 2005). The BSC arises from the urgent need to measure the success of organizations, so that the vision and strategy are converted into objectives, indicators and targets. In turn, these objectives and goals indicators are translated from other perspectives, as well as financial, following an integrated system of monitoring and improvement (Speckbacker et al., 2003). In the last decades, it has been underlined the inadequacy of exclusive use of financial indicators (Kaplan & Norton, 1992). BSC suggests a combination of financial performance measures, with due attention to customer needs, business processes and long-term sustainability. The BSC is reflected by the balance between the lagging indicators that represent the measurement results, the past, and the main representative indicators of future trends that will affect the results in the future (De Haas, 2000). The BSC not only translate the strategy into operational terms, and promotes the alignment of its organizational strategy translated into business units and employees in carrying out daily tasks (Frigo & Krumwiede, 2000). The main target is to create value considering the intangible and intellectual capital as opposed to traditional financial performance systems (Pandey, 2005). The BSC adds to traditional financial performance measures, other three perspectives, namely, customers, internal processes and learning and growth, thereby allowing the monitoring of progress in building internal capabilities and acquiring the intangible assets that are crucial for future growth in parallel with the development of the financial accompanying measures. Using the BSC, organizations are no longer simply dependent on financial performance indicators. The first step in the creation process management for the implementation of the strategy involves the construction of a consistent and reliable structure, which represents the network of relationships that lead to the achievement of the objectives and implementation of the strategy. This framework is known as the “strategy map”, which describes the network of cause and effect relationships between the organization’s strategy and the daily employee’s tasks (Kaplan & Norton, 2000). The strategy map graphically displays the key variables for each of the BSC perspectives, reflecting on all the organization’s strategy. At the bottom of the map displays key performance inductors that enable the organization to achieve the desired financial results. The process of defining the strategy should be driven by a broad consensus among all stakeholders on what are the key performance factors should be considered. The BSC is a process of change in the way tasks are performed and the acceptance of this change has decisive influence on the course of the process (Venkatraman & Gering, 2000). To this organizational dialogue process, top management involvement is critical to achieving consensus required as to legitimize and encourage the development and implementation of the BSC (Richardson, 2004).

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BSC Strengths The worldwide dissemination and success of the BSC implementations is supported on its ability to answer to the central issues of the modern management and the management accounting practices. The academy and practitioners recognized the BSC strengths and highlighted the following main issues: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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The BSC not only translates strategy into operational terms as the organization aligns its strategy, focusing on the business units and employees about their role in fulfilling the organization mission (Frigo & Krumwiede, 2000). BSC enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action providing feedback on both the internal strategy process and external outcomes to continuously improve strategic performance and results (Neely et al., 2002). The BSC is a hierarchical system of strategic objectives spread over four prospects, less strategy and aligned with the financial perspective (Figge et al., 2002). The BSC is a framework for performance measurement that focuses the attention of management in just a few steps and makes bridges between the different functional areas (Akkermans & Oorschot, 2002). Olve et al., (2003) highlights the importance of internal processes to achieve business results, but also the external view from customers and market position. A well designed BSC should be able to describe the strategies through the objectives and measures chosen (Niven, 2003). BSC is more than a stand-alone performance measurement tool, is a complete framework for implementing and executing strategy (Papalexandris et al., 2004; Malmi, 2001) BSC allows employees understand the strategy and objectives making the connection to your company’s day-to-day (Pandey, 2005). Clarifying the operational strategy and facilitating communication, BSC aims to serve as an engine to efficiently align the company with the strategy of the foam that managers can align their actions and efforts (Voelpel et al., 2006). BSC can be applied in companies of any size to manage and evaluate business strategy, monitor operation efficiency, and communicate related processes to all employees (Rohm, 2006). BSC is a means for guiding the organization towards the achievement of its strategy (Atkinson, 2006). The communication strategy of the BSC allows managers to understand how measurement results are affected by their actions (Burney & Widener, 2007). Bose and Thomas (2007) emphasize that the learning and growth perspective is particularly important for the strategic management as it allows to identify and improve the performance of intellectual capital. De Geuser et al. (2009) found that the BSC contributed positively to an organization’s performance by providing a good translation of the strategy into operational terms, making the strategy a continuous process, and managing to align processes, services, competences and business units. Basu et al. (2009) claimed that the most important aspect of the BSC to project managers is transforming projects tasks into tangible performance measures. Once the BSC requires company concretely define a mission, a vision and an organizational strategy, then the BSC can be seen as a means of communication and strategy implementation (Tayler, 2010). Banchieri et al. (2011) suggest that across all industries, implementation of the BSC is most often related to a need arising from a strategic change in the organization. Giannopoulos et al. (2013) claims that the BSC has the potential to assist small organization to connect internal factors to internal business process, and learning and growth perspectives, and external factors to customers and financial perspectives to enhance chances of success.


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The increasing use of the BSC between small and medium-sized organizations contributes to increase their chances of survival in the current macro-economic environment (Hoque, 2014). Madsen and Stenheim (2014) show that the BSC contributes positively to organizational performance, mainly due to three joint actions: (1) Focus the top management on the strategy; (2) The integration of financial and non-financial as a basis of business process; (3) Monitor strategy implementation by mapping cause-effect relationships between internal initiatives and the implementation of the strategy.

BSC Limitations Despite its worldwide adoption, the results of the BSC implementations seem to be far from the expectations and the criticism focuses mainly on the conceptual, structural and the managerial BSC factors. A growing body of scholarship thus finds limitations in the BSC underlining some of the most important arguments: • •

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Not all stakeholders were included in the BSC, in particular, suppliers and public authorities, which can be decisive for many organizations (Atkinson et al., 1997; Nørreklit, 2000). The flaw in the process of cause-and-effect relationship is crucial, since invalid assumptions fed the control system with incorrect information that will cause the anticipation of the results of the performance indicators, resulting in dysfunctional organizational behaviors and sub-optimal performance (De Haas & Kleingeld, 1999). The BSC provides no mechanism to maintain the relevance of the initially defined measures (Hudson et al., 2001; Platts & Tan, 2002). The lack of focus on the human resources dimension of organizations is perhaps the greatest weakness of the BSC (Maltz, Shenhar, & Reilly, 2003). The BSC contains a serious failure in their construction, once it focused management strictly on a set of pre-defined indicators and measures and they are not able to respond to simple and fundamental question, such as “what our competitors are doing? ” (Kennerley & Neely, 2003). The BSC does not monitor competition or technological developments. This implies that does not consider the uncertainty inherent risks involved in the events that can threaten this strategy. The effect of this control model can lead to serious dysfunctional behavior and loss of control over the implementation of the strategy (Nørreklit, 2003). In practice organizations submerge in the task of generating indicators without devoting sufficient time to the definition of the strategy and the results are indicators that are not aligned with the strategic objectives (Richardson, 2004). Rillo (2004) observes the inability of the BSC in dealing with knowledge creation, learning and growth. If establishing significant correlations between measures and casual chains was immediately obvious then the need for strategy diminished dramatically (Bukh & Malmi, 2005). Due to problems in the implementation of the strategy is difficult to achieve a balance between financial and non-financial measures (Anand et al., 2005). Voelpel et al. (2006) draw attention to the rigidity in the BSC design as a performance measurement tool. Pessanha and Prochnik (2006) criticize the lack of explicit involvement and engagement with the employee in its definition of objectives and measures. Molleman (2007) reported that a significant limitation for BSC implementations is their lack of flexibility. Very often the organizations do not understand what exactly the BSC is and what its implementation involves (Othman, 2009).

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Antonsen (2010) states that the implementation of the BSC requires a minimum set of resources allocated for the collection and treatment of new data, and could create work overload in some departments. Parmenter (2012) criticizes how the BSC develops and defines performance measures. Kraaijenbrink, (2012) posits that the BSC is well suited for engineering firms and less for other industry types especially service industries. Basuony (2014) discusses the potential merits of implementing the BSC in SMEs as well as the nature, value and application of BSC in large firms.

Keeping BSC Updated and Aligned with Today´s Needs Today performance measurement systems are attracting increasing attention among academics and practitioners alike. Many organizations have shown a complete disconnection between their strategy and how they measure it. BSC through strategy maps became a powerful tool, allowing organizations to convert its initiatives and resources, including intangible assets such as corporate cultures and employee knowledge, into tangible outcomes. Organizations modify their BSC primarily by two sets of reasons (Lueg et al., 2013): (1) Adapting perspectives, objectives and KPIs to their specific needs (Kaplan and Norton, 1996); and (2) choosing the type of BSC that best fits the purpose (Speckbacher et al., 2003). Several studies revealing the BSC versatility and vitality across different industries, functions or hierarchies and these developments are the better response to criticism. • • • • • • • • • • •

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Figge et al. (2002) formulate the sustainability BSC. This approach is a starting point for integration of environmental and social issues within the management process. McAdam and Walker (2003) focusing on the public administration, provides a framework for improving the efficiency and effectiveness at all levels of public management. Akkermans and van Oorschot (2002) show empirically that system dynamics modelling and simulation methods can effectively address problems with the quality of BSC-measures during the development process. Van Grembergen et al. (2003) applied the BSC to IT resulting in four specific domains: business contribution perspective, user perspective, operational excellence perspective and future perspective. Pollalis et al. (2004) presents an application of the BSC methodology in the Defence Finance and Accounting Service of the Department of Defense in the USA, suggesting the customer perspective to be placed on the top of the BSC’s causal relationships. Valiris et al. (2005) proposes a methodology that provides a structure to guide decision makers through the process of measure selection. The decision maker is forced to be thorough in the assessment of the problem and in the evaluation of the alternatives available. Assiri et al. (2006) identifying 27 critical success factors which are expected to influence the BSC implementation. Jiménez-Zarco et al. (2006) links BSC with product development and innovation. They proposed a new performance dimension that allows measuring the performance and the quality. Decoene and Bruggeman (2006) analyse the relationship between strategic alignment, motivation and organisational performance in the BSC context. Gumbus and Lussier (2006) use three case studies to illustrate how the BSC and its traditional four perspectives can be adjusted to SME organizations. Huang and Hu (2007) show how to align IT capabilities and activities with business objectives and business requirements using the BSC.


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Chang (2007) documents how the BSC was applied by the UK National Healthcare System to assess the performance of hospitals. The four original perspectives of the BSC were replaced by “waiting time”, “clinical output/outcome”, patient satisfaction” and “capacity and capability”. Greatbanks and Tapp (2007) analyses impact of BSC in a public sector environment. The clarity of the employee role appears to have a positive influence on the achievement of the organisation’s business plan and excellence goals regarding the delivery of customer service. Othman (2008) purpose the idea of linking the use of the BSC with Scenario Planning to reinforces the process of formulation and strategy implementation. Aguilera and Walker (2008) mentioned the introduction of BSC at private hospital as a framework for improving clinical governance to achieve better outcomes for patients and staff. Tsai, Chou and Hsu (2008) demonstrate how to use a sustainability BSC to evaluate socially responsible investments. Basu et al. (2009) illustrate a customised application of the Balanced Scorecard at the Heathrow Terminal 5 project. A major infrastructure project with multiple stakeholders. Griffith and Neely (2009) exploits a quasi-experimental setting to estimate the impact that a multi-dimensional group incentive scheme had on branch performance in a large UK distribution. The included BSC perspectives are the traditional perspectives financial and customer; the newly added are internal measures, people and supplier. Burney and Swanson (2010) study two characteristics of BSC and their impacts on manager´s job satisfaction. Yang, et al. (2010) propose the BSC to assign the attribute weight by an expert group in multiple decision making. Creamer and Freund (2010) propose an algorithm to build a representative Alternating Decision Trees (ADT) based on cross-validation experiments. The representative ADT selects the most important indicators for the board BSC. Chalmeta and Palomero (2010) investigate the use of the BSC for sustainability in 16 organizations. Besides adjusting the traditional four perspectives, they suggest adding three new perspectives: technologies, social/occupational, and environmental. Lind and Kraus (2010) explores the adoption of the corporate BSC and its impact on corporate control of business units Barnabè (2011) matching the traditional BSC architecture with system dynamics principles offers better support for strategic management decisions. Al-Ashaab et al. (2011) illustrate how the BSC can also be used in collaborative, inter-organizational settings. Kept the internal business processes perspective and added newly perspectives included competitiveness, sustainable development, innovation, strategic partnerships, and human capital. Chytas et al. (2011) proposes a proactive BSC methodology. The proposed decision aid may serve as a back end to BSC development and implementation. Marcos et al. (2012) develop the design for an IT BSC that mix together with business environment, balances and control of the IT strategy. Abushaiba and Zainuddin (2012) claims that BSC allows the possibility of emergence of new ideas to deal with the internal and external opportunities and threats. Amado et al. (2012) presents the development of a conceptual framework which aims to assess Decision Making Units from multiple perspectives. Wu and Chang (2012). Grounding on the Innovation Diffusion theory and BSC, proposes a novel framework for exploring the relationships between a stage-based structure and the BSC. Glykas (2012) proposes a new approach to supplementing the status analysis and objectives composition phases of typical strategy formulation projects, by supporting fuzzy cognitive modelling and intelligent reasoning of the anticipated impact of strategic change initiatives to business performance.

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Tjader et al. (2013) showed how the BSC can be operationalized to serve as a basis for a firm’s strategic IT outsourcing policy decisions. The BSC captures and interrelates different perspectives and indicator measures, providing a comprehensive view of the firm for strategic analysis Gomes et al. (2013) explore the linkage between the Benefits Dependency Network from Benefits Management approach with Strategy Maps. Lin et al. (2013) explain the hierarchical integration of the BSC with fuzzy linguistic for evaluating operating room performance in hospitals. Aloha et al. (2014) developed the BSC framework for safety performance in Saudi schools that captures all the relevant perspectives that influence the effectiveness of the safety performance process. Waruhiu (2014) claims for a rebalancing of BSC to accommodate a fifth perspective which considers the interface between the firm and its external environment. Ozmantar and Gedikoglu (2016) investigate the development and implementation process of the BSC approach in an educational institution. The process leads to the extraction of twelve important design principles that might be particularly useful for those educational institutions which do not have a strategic performance management background Alharby et al. (2016) highlighted that Private Cloud Computing will provide strategic values for all BSC perspectives with some high expectations for the financial perspective.

DISCUSSION Overall, the main reasons why performance measurement systems are necessary by the business organizations seems to be consensual and are the following: (1) The difficulty in understanding whether a company or a public organization is improving quality or performance without measuring results; (2) Measurements can keep the managers focused on what really has to be done right, what really has to be improved (3) Measuring prevents arbitrary organizational and cultural changes in an institution; (4) Measurements encourage people to become involved in changes because they provide feedback on their work; (5) Linking improvements and measurements, you avoid the different activities from being mixed, matched and confused. The increasing dynamics, uncertainty, intense rivalry, macro-economic changes and complexity of the external business environments, pressured the organizations to change their performance measurement systems to more sophisticated measurement tools. In the original conception of the BSC, the main benefits were to assist organizations to develop and implement effective business strategies, but since the BSC concept is not yet mature, differences in its interpretation and practice have emerged. Depending on interpretation and practice, many organizations have implemented the BSC to support a wide range of strategic organizational objectives, such as: (1) as a strategic management tool to support decision-making at the top management level; (2) improving management of intellectual capital (3) developing employee incentive system; (4) measuring the overall performance of an organization or to implement a strategy (5) Enhancing the chances of survival of the small-scale organizations; (6) assisting large organizations to achieve their strategies by enabling management to articulate, communicate, and monitor strategy implementation; (7) developing strategy maps to provides the management with a deep insight into business operations and the potential areas to focus to create value; (8) improving the achievement of strategy since it transforms a strategy into tangible performance metrics, which managers can track, alter, or speed up. Some of the most referred organizational problems are the communication, coordination and control. Communication is essential when using the BSC. Management must communicate strategy to employees and how they expect employees to perform to achieve the corporate goals.

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The BSC requires that a company strategy be defined and that is also the senior management’s responsibility selected the best measurements of strategy. The BSC does require management to focus on creating strategy and defining ways that performance can be measured in accordance with strategy. BSC may require some substantial changes in culture within the organization. To accept this new approach, the organization need to mature within this new culture, new things to measure, new goals in different areas, making BSC even more balanced and effective in supporting of a growing and sustainable organization. The BSC requires understanding, commitment and support from the very top management. The problems surrounding the “balancing” of the BSC four perspectives was been referenced recurrently as a source of difficulties. Identifying the relative importance of trade-offs between perspectives are crucial when resolving conflicts in setting targets for different measures of the perspectives. The BSC must be constantly up-dated and that promote de re-alignment with changing strategies and corporate structure. The BSC aims to address a major concern of managers to monitor and ensure that the objectives of the organization’s strategy will be implemented and achieved. It also allows to monitoring the evolution of organizational decisions considering a set of key indicators. Each person in the organization must understand each particular aspect of the strategy to help the organizations to achieve full success. CONCLUSION Although an increasing number of companies have been using nonfinancial performance measurements in areas such as customer loyalty and employee satisfaction, few have realized the potential benefits of these relatively new measurement systems. This is because they fail to correctly identify, analyze and act on the right measurements. Performance measurement systems, such as the BSC, are useful in uniting the organization in an effort to achieving success. The successfulness of the measurement system depends on the extent to which the entire organization is aligned with the overall goals and objectives of the company. Today organizations operate and compete in a very dynamic environment, trying to make a careful and effective management of their investments. To have more prosperous organizations it becomes necessary to add more value to the business through projects and initiatives that incorporate changes in the way of performing the work, changes in processes, adequacy of skills or acquiring new resources. These initiatives should be increasingly strategic to ensure alignment with the organization’s goals. Internally, the sharing of responsibility is essential for everyone to be aware of the efforts made within the organizational puzzle. To achieve the expected results, it is necessary to continually improve so that they remain appropriate and aligned with the organization’s strategy measurement systems. The BSC represents the natural evolution of management practices, arising with the necessity to complete the traditional approach of measuring the financial success of organizations in the way that organizational vision and strategy are converted into goals, strategic indicators, targets and initiatives and that its unfolding occurs through other perspectives beyond the financial, with the focus of maintaining long-term sustainability. The frameworks that ignore this new reality may compromise the sustainable future of the organizations.

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Jorge Gomes is a PhD student of Management at ISEG – Lisboa School of Economics & Management. He holds a Masters in Management from ISCTE-IUL, and a degree in Geographic Engineering from the Faculty of Sciences of the Universidade de Lisboa. During the past 30 years, he has worked as an engineer, project manager and a quality auditor. His research interests include Benefits Management, Project Management, Maturity Models and IS/IT Investments. Mário José Batista Romão is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at ISEG – Lisboa School of Economics & Management, Universidade de Lisboa. He is Director of the Masters programme in Project Management. He holds a PhD in Management Sciences from ISCTE-IUL and another PhD in Computer Integrated Manufacturing from Cranfield University (UK). He also holds an MSc in Telecommunications and Computer Science from the IST - Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa. He is a Postgraduate in Project Management and holds the international certification of Project Management Professional (PMP) from PMI – Project Management International. He also has a degree in Electrotechnical Engineering from the IST. 15