The Balanced Scorecard during the early stages of a tech firm : A multiple case study regarding performance management in Swedish tech startups

• Main Authors: Llorach, Carlos, Ottosson, Emanuel
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen 2016
• Subjects: CSF; KPI; performance management; the Balanced Scorecard; BSC; tech; startups; entrepreneurship; fast growing; SMEs; success stories; from idea to IPO; life cycle of an organization; sustainable growth; management control
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-301095

The rapid advances in technology and increase of tech investments across all the industries have promoted the emergence of several startups. Unfortunately, not all startups succeed despite of having good initial ideas. One reason to the poor business performance could be a lack of managerial control. Researchers and industry experts believe that performance management could support tech entrepreneurs to monitor and control the drivers that promote growth and their success. However, there is a lack of studies that could support these thoughts about its suitability for tech startups. Therefore, this study gathers empirical findings from Swedish tech startups as well as industry experts to discuss this issue. The findings show that a performance measurement system such as the Balanced Scorecard is a suitable practice for tech entrepreneurs. It also brings some insights about how the performance measurements evolve as the firms mature.