• First outline your strategic objectives.
• Identify measures/ indicators which can add value to organization/stakeholders and can contribute in achievement of desired business outcomes.
• Examine the behaviour that these measures/ indicators will drive.
• Examine what meaningful results these selected measures will deliver and inter-relationship &/or impact of them across the organization.

Besides the article suggested by Prof. Weber, you can also take some help from following articles.

https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/about/people-and...of.../ijopm2010.pdf

www.tlog.lth.se/fileadmin/tlog/Utbildning/...i.../Perf_Meas._Neely.pdf

Ittner, Larcker & Meyer (2003). Subjectivity and the Weighting of Performance Measures: Evidence from a Balanced Scorecard. The Accounting Review, 78 (3), 725–758

I agree that cost centers need to consider both the financial and non financial perspectives, but there is a need for considering the weighting between these perspectives.

I wonder anyone has come across any weightings? If so, please share.

Thanks

Thank you all very much for your answers. The point that I was trying to follow ,is some BSC writers have mentioned that in order to manage BSC implementation successfully ,totally there should be approximately 25 Measures in the BSC. These measures ,of course, must be related and distributed  to the four perspectives  of the BSC (Financial, customers, learning and growth ,and processes).How this can be done? And what should be the major characteristics of the measures that will be selected for each perspective?

Dear GIN

weighting can be applied for identifying relevant measures (exactly like the Goal Programming Technique).In one of my papers, which is published in Iran, I have used AHP technique to determine the hierarchy of the selected measures.  Other techniques such as  TOPSIS  can also be applied. Good luck

I think the major criteria you look for are the following: (See Kaplan & Norton, The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment, 2001). (Example of Mobil NAM & R’s Balanced Scorecard)

1) Financial

. ROCE

· Cash flow

· Net margin rank (vs.competition)

· Full cost per gallon delivered (vs.competition)

· Volume growth rate vs. industry

· Premium ratio

· Nongasoline revenue and margin

2) Customers

.Share of segment in selected key markets

· Mystery shopper rating

· Dealer gross profit growth

· Dealer survey

3) Internal Processes

. New product ROI

· New product acceptance rate

· Dealer quality score

· Yield gap

· Unplanned down time

· Inventory levels

· Run-out rate

· Activity cost vs. competition

· Perfect orders

· Number of environmental incidents

· Days away from work rate

4) Learning and Growth

. Employee survey

· Personal Balanced Scorecard (%)

· Strategic competency availability

· Strategic information availability

 You might be interested in the attached papers.

This is interesting, but I believe firms and cost centers need guidelines on inserting weightings to the financial and non financial variables. Any good literature that I could lay my hands on? 

If we concern about reliability and relevance of financial measures. We should also concern about reliability and relevance of other measures i.e. customer, internal business process and learning and growth. This is based on AAA recommendation in 2002.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308427094_An_Empirical_Study_of_the_Balanced_Scorecard_Model_Evidence_from_Bangladesh

Article An Empirical Study of the Balanced Scorecard Model: Evidence...

Dear Mohammad,

Recently, I came across this paper: Ball, T., Harber, B., Moore, K. and Verlaan-Cole, L. (2003). Best Practice Balanced Scorecards for Governance, Ogranizations and CEOs. Managing Change (Fall 2003), pp. 15-34. The authors suggest to support the BSC through Accountability Agreements between the shareholders, the board, the CEO and the management to strengthen the achievement of strategic goals.

Paul

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your comment.Although the suggestion made by Ball et al.(2003) might posit a theoretical value,obtaining "Accountability Agreements" is ,if not impossible,extremely difficult to be attined in real implementation of the BSC.

Good luck and thanks again

Dear Mohammad,

You are absolutely right. I just wanted to point towards a strand of research or, let say, a new idea. But in fact I am totally with you - the paper of Ball et al. may be worth mentioning for the sake of the reference list, but in practice "Accountability Agreements" may be either hardly to achieve, or they may be just another lip service or paper tiger from the top of the firm. I assume, that in a firm where you could create real functioning "Accountability Agreements", you would not need any of them in the first place.

Paul

Dear Paul,

Thanks again for your comment. Good luck.

- Linked to the strategic objectives

- respect a cause-and-effect relationship

- Feasible to obtain the measures

- Concise and reflect reality of the phenomena which desire to measure

Dear Guilherme ,

Thank you very much for your answer. Your points are discussed in textbooks and theoretical materials. I am after practical point of views in implementing BSC measures.

Good luck.