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Introduction

Critical Evaluation of the performance of Loughborough Business School from the perspective of undergraduate students Table of contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Different performance measures 3 3. Balance Scorecard 4 4. Measure the value of the Balanced Scorecard 4 5. Potential balance scorecard to reflect planned increase in tuition fees. 5 6. Increase in tuition fees: 6 7. Recommendations & Conclusion 7 8. References 8 Executive Summary This critical evaluation sets out to measure the performance of the business school, which is now known as School of Business & Economics (SBE), in light of two users, undergraduate students and Loughborough University. This evaluation will then propose a potential balanced scorecard (BSC) that could be used to include the planned increase in tuition fees alongside a discussion as to why this new proposed balance scorecard reflects the impact in light of undergraduate students and Loughborough University. It will conclude by answering the question, 'Do performance measures significantly enhance the value of the Loughborough Business School?' Outlying the benefits of performance management techniques we are able to conclude that once performance measures are adapted indeed potential benefits can become realized. Different performance measures It is often stated that "Measurement managed companies outperform non-measurement managed companies," (Lingle & Schiemann, 1996) ...read more.

Middle

can lead to higher quality students attending the business school (customer perspective), which will increase the rankings in league tables (financial perspective) and lead to increased funding and therefore more support for teaching innovation (learning and growth perspective). The government has announced that they will be cutting funding to Universities, but have increased the cap that Universities can charge for tuition fees to �9000 in order to fill the gap, meaning in reality Universities are not receiving any increased funding, but is changing who they are receiving the funding from. For these reasons, the balanced scorecard's critical measures may change priorities to ensure the university is able to compete in the market. The balanced scorecard allows this flexibility to ensure that there is not an information overload, and only critical processes are measured (Kaplan, R. Norton, D. (1992)). As students will be providing the funding, their expectations will be increased as they will want higher value for the money they are paying. This means programme excellence measures, shown on the balanced scorecard (Appendix 1), will become an increasing priority as the programmes, contact time, technology and facilities will all have to reflect the increase in tuition fees, even though in reality there is no increase in funding from the university's point of view. ...read more.

Conclusion

A suggested approach to overcome this problem could be to provide further incentive for additional funding from alumni members. One way this could be achieved is by offering an engraved gold plate which would be placed on the alumni wall to recognise the contribution made. Some measures of the balanced scorecard are extremely useful in that they provide us with clear performance indicators; however the lagging indicators can prevent the improvement of some aspects of the business school. Therefore, the balanced scorecard approach has room for improvement and is not particularly straightforward to apply to universities. Recommendations & Conclusion * Flexible and adaptable, however it is difficult in context of academic institutions - 3 different sections instead of 4 - Krishna will send backup * Golden plate * SBE doesn't currently use BSC, they could use it with other performance measures (financial) to provide a full overview of the performance of the uni - internal and external. (league tables) * Overall it can be concluded that the balance scorecard is useful in integrating goals and strategy but when implemented with respect to academic institutions it can be limited in measuring overall performance. "the Balanced Scorecard does not provide a bottom line score or a unified view with clear recommendations: it is simply a list of metrics". (Jensen, Michael C. ...read more.

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