1. How does the balanced scorecard address the problem of not just using financial performance to measure overall performance?             Profitability, gross revenues and return to capital are crucial to measures the company's performance. These are the bottom line that companies must deliver in order to survive. However, there are untoward consequences that may arise if the management focuses only on the financial health of the organization. One of these is that financial measures are 'lagging indicators' of success. Another cost of just focusing on financial measures is that companies have nothing to do directly with the customers who use their product or service.             The balanced scorecard is the remedy to this problem because it does not only focus on the financial performance of the company but it also gives a comprehensive view with equal emphasis on outcome measures (the financial measures or lagging indicators), measures that will tell management how well the company is doing now (current indicators) and measures of how it might do in the future (leading indicators). Balance scorecard provides a clear prescription as to what companies should measure in order to 'balance' the financial perspective.              It is not only a measurement system but also a management system that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. It provides feedback around both the internal business processes and external outcomes in order to continuously improve strategic performance and results. Generally, balanced scorecard view the organization from four perspectives such as the learning and growth perspective, the business process perspective, the customer and financial perspective. The information from these four perspectives provides balance between external measures like operating income and internal measures like new product development. It also provides a balanced picture of current operating performance as well as the drivers of future performance. 2. What kind of measurements might be made within each of the perspectives? A. Financial Perspective – The financial performance measure vary based upon the long-run objective and strategy of a business in the growth, sustain or harvest stage. Cash flow, sales growth, market share, return on equity (ROE), return on capital employed (ROCE) and economic value added  are the measures that indicate whether the company's strategy, implementation and execution are contributing to bottom line improvement. B. Customer Perspective – In this perspective, measures are customized to the targeted customer groups from which the business expects growth and profitability. Market share, account share, customer retention, new customer acquisition, customer satisfaction and customer profitability are the customer measures. C. Internal Business Perspective – It identifies the most critical internal processes for the organization's strategy to succeed. In this perspective, measures should focused on the business processes that have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction (such as factors that affect process cycle time, process quality, employee skills, and productivity), business processes that achieve the organizations financial objective and core competencies and processes that are needed to maintain market leadership. D. Learning and Growth Perspective – It identifies the infra-structure that the organization must build to create long-term growth and improvement. This is categorized into three main areas such as people, systems and organizational procedures. Employee satisfaction, employee retention, employee training and employee skills are the measures for people. On one hand, the measurement for systems are the real-time availability of accurate customer and internal process information to front-line employees, the ability to launch new products, the ability to create more value for customers and the ability to penetrate new markets. Further, the measurement for the organizational procedures is the alignment of employee incentives with overall organizational success factors and the rates of improvement in critical customer-based and internal processes. 3. Doesn't it just add confusion for these perspectives because each has their own set of measurements? To permit managers to see their company more clearly from the four perspectives and to make wiser long-term decisions is the goal of making measurements.  However, despite the case that the four perspectives has their own measurement , it does not add confusion to the process because data and information needed for performance measurement and improvement are of many types including customer, product and service performance, operations, market, competitive comparisons, supplier, employee-related and cost and financial. Each of the perspectives has each specific data and information from each measurement different from other perspectives. The Total Quality Management: an Example             Total Quality Management (TQM) is not a new concept. Organizations of all types and sizes have long used the principles of TQM to continuously improve everything. But what is TQM? What are the situations in which TQM is the most appropriate?             TQM is an organizational approach to customer satisfaction involving customers, people and the continuous improvement of processes. It is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational transactions. It is also a people focused management system that aims at continual increase in customer satisfaction at continually lower real costs.       It provides an umbrella under which everyone in the organization can strive and create customer satisfaction. In order to do this, the company should maintain a quality standard in all aspects of its business. This can be done by ensuring that things are done right the first time and that defects and waste are eliminated from the operations.             Manufacturing is one of the organization's situations where TQM appeared to be the most appropriate. In manufacturing organization where quality assurance through statistical methods is the key component, TQM generally starts by sampling a random selection of the product. This sample is tested for things that matter most to the end users. The test identified the causes of any failures and such failures are isolated. Then, secondary measures of production process are designed and the causes of such failures are corrected.             On one hand, statistical distributions of important measurements are also tracked. The process is fixed when the measures of parts waft into the defined 'error brand'. In order that the production process is fixed before failing parts can be produced, the 'error brand' should be distributed tighter than the 'failure brand.             The measurement ranges and the failures that caused them are important to be recorded so that cheaper fixes can be substituted later without a loss of quality. It is very common for parts to be redesigned, after TQM has been in use so that important measurements either cease to exist or become much wider.             One of the examples of TQM in manufacturing tests is the "life test". In this test the sample product is operated until a part fails. Another example is the "shake and bake" test where the sample is mounted on a vibrator in an environmental oven and operated art progressively more extreme vibration and temperature until something fails. The failure is then isolated and engineers design an improvement.             TQM products are often cheaper to produce because of efficiency and performance improvements. There is also no need to repair dead-in-arrival products because there are already immensely more desirable products who already undergone total quality management.             In education, TQM principles are also applied to improve library services. Harvard College Library and Oregon State University Libraries are two of the libraries who have implemented TQM successfully.                 Harvard learned about TQM with the help of consultants.  It created a task force which rewrote the library's vision statement. It considered the changes that would have to be made in order to develop a new organization culture, one that "highlights the changing nature of staff roles and responsibilities in an era of pervasive change". It found that the principles of service excellence, teamwork, ongoing training and skill building, process/systems focus, continuous improvement and cooperation across boundaries could help them make the changes they needed.             Moreover, the Oregon State University Libraries created two small teams, the Shelving Team from the stack maintenance unit and the Documents Team from the government publications unit who worked with outside facilitators to test TQM. Each team surveyed users and staff. They found that some issues perceived as critical by staff were not perceived as critical by customers and therefore needed rethinking in terms of TQM. The Shelving Team which wanted to address the problem of long-lasting shelving backlogs found that the shelvers who worked alone on the floors felt isolated and unmotivated to make progress. The team devised a plan for shelvers to work in small groups and have an assigned floor using this information. The result was an increased espirit de corps, tidier shelves, and fewer backlogs.             Additionally, TQM is not only practice in manufacturing and education but also in the government and service industries as well as in the NASA space and science programs where quality is most important aspect of operations. A Proposal for the Total Quality Management (TQM) Adoption of Australian Public Library             The Australian Public Library is an essential component for having an educated and literate population in the country. Books and periodicals are the most common material sources borrowed by the Australian public particularly the students. Moreover, the library has also a wide array of other media including CDs, software, video tapes and DVDs as well as facilities to access the World Wide Web or the Internet. Similarly, it also provide other services such as community meeting rooms, a children's story-time and space for homework-help programs  and for other community service purposes.             It is distinct from other Australian research libraries, school libraries and other libraries because it mandates to serve the publics' information needs generally rather than serve a particular school, institution or research population. Australian Public Library typically lend, circulates book and other materials to the Australian users. It has also non-circulating reference collections. The library does not only focus on popular materials such as fiction and videos but also on educational and nonfiction materials of interest to the general public.             The main focus of Australian Public Library is to provide the best services possible. TQM has a big thing to do with this focus. The library's adoption of the total quality management approach will help the library realize its goal. By the adoption of TQM, the library can benefit from it in three ways such as breaking down interdepartmental barriers, redefining the beneficiaries of library service as internal customers or the staff and external customers or the patrons and reaching a state of continuous improvement.             Moreover, TQM will help the Australian Public Library to determine if there is a need for changes. In addition, TQM will assist the library administrator to analyze the niche market, the purpose of the customers why they come in, how to look the efficiency of the library and how the library can serve its current customers.             In order to apply the TQM, the library must first learn about the customers. Interviews and surveys can be done to know the issues. Knowing the issues will aid the administrator to formulate decisions and actions to address and solve such issues.             Similarly, the Australian Public Library is really an ideal place to implement TQM since it is a service oriented organization dedicated to its customers and patrons. Library manager can transform and improve the organization by formulating a strategic plan and following it with a commitment to continuous quality improvement.             TQM principles will make the library decisions by careful analysis of data gathered with tools such as check sheets, histograms and Pareto charts. Since library work is a labor intensive, TQM eliminate rework by simplifying it   and making sure it is done properly. Additionally, since library staffs are the library's most valuable resources, TQM principles will encouraged them to point out problems without fear of management creating a respect for people and ideas. And lastly, TQM approach will also bring trust to library staff to act responsibly. It will give them the appropriate authority to make decisions that can improve the quality of work they do.             The Australian Public Library can use some ways in implementing the principles of TQM to enhance its library services such as creating service brochures and information kits, conducting a user survey about library services, improving signage, changing hours of operation, providing a more convenient material return, simplifying checkout of materials, using flexibility in staff assignments, cooperating with local government, asking vendors to give product demonstrations and giving new staff a thorough orientation.             Further, the TQM library principles like creating  interdepartmental library advisory groups, improving the physical layout of the library  tracking complaints, developing an active outreach program, opening satellite offices, publicizing new or changed services, developing user and staff training materials, targeting services to specific groups offering electronic document delivery, following the mission statement and smiling can also boost its services.             Generally, the Australian Public Library should follow the 14 steps to total quality management outlined by Edward Deming. 1. Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service. Constancy of purpose requires innovation, investment in research and education, continuous improvement of product and service, maintenance of equipment, furniture and fixtures and new aids to production. 2. Adopt the new philosophy. Management must undergo a transformation and begin to believe in quality products and services. 3. Cease dependence on mass inspection. Inspect products and services only enough to be able to identify ways to improve the process. 4. End the practice of awarding business on price tag alone. The lowest priced goods are not always the highest quality; choose a supplier based on its record of improvement and then make a long-term commitment to it. 5. Improve constantly and forever the system of product and service. Improvement is not a one-time effort; management is responsible for leading the organization into the practice of continual improvement in quality and productivity. 6. Institute training and retraining. Workers need to know how to do their jobs correctly even if they need to learn new skills. 7. Institute leadership. Leadership is the job of management. Managers have the responsibility to discover the barriers that prevent staff from taking pride in what they do. The staff will know what those barriers are. 8. Drive out fear. Managers need to create an environment where workers can express concerns with confidence. 9. Break down barriers between staff areas. Managers should promote teamwork by helping staff in different areas/departments work together. Fostering interrelationships among departments encourages higher quality decision-making. 10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce. Using slogans alone, without an investigation into the processes of the workplace, can be offensive to workers because they imply that a better job could be done. Managers need to learn real ways of motivating people in their organizations. 11. Eliminate numerical quotas. Quotas impede quality more than any other working condition; they leave no room for improvement. Workers need the flexibility to give customers the level of service they need. 12. Remove barriers to pride of workmanship. Give workers respect and feedback about how they are doing their jobs. 13. Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining. With continuous improvement, job descriptions will change. As a result, employees need to be educated and retrained so they will be successful at new job responsibilities. 14. Take action to accomplish the transformation. Management must work as a team to carry out the previous 13 steps.             The balance scorecard can be used to analyze and utilize the 14 steps to total quality management since it provides a comprehensive framework that can translate a company's vision and strategy into a coherent and linked set of performance measures. It also includes both the outcome measures and the performance drivers of those outcomes. In the same way, it can be viewed as the Australian's Public Library instrument for its strategy since strategic measures are those that define a strategy designed for competitive excellence. In general, this will provide the library the measures with a clear representation of the organization's strategy for competitive service success.             The real benefit comes from making the scorecard the cornerstone of the way the Australian Public Library will run its operation effectively. Imagine an organization which everyone understands the strategy and his or her role in executing it. This will prepares the library staffs' high performance workforce and motivation to achieve the results.             The Australian Public Library balanced scorecard will use four primary measurement tools. 1. Financial             Public revenue, funding and contributions and cost management will be used for evaluating the financial perspective. 2. Customer             Consumer, library patron and students surveys will be conducted to measure their perspective about the Australian Public Library. These surveys will measure a variety of attributes for service functions, technology and innovation. 3. Process Measurements and Benchmarks             Process developments will be developed top include productivity measures, efficiency measures and effectiveness measures. Negative performance gaps will be addressed with action plans. 4. Employee Satisfaction and Effectiveness             Library staffs will be surveyed on their evaluations of the workplace. Information from these surveys, along with other gauges will be used to measure the employee learning and growth perspective regarding the library's working environment. Attributes that are correlated to providing high satisfaction levels among staff will be identified and executed throughout the library affair.