From Balanced Scorecard to Integrated Management System: linking operation to strategy in SMEs

The relevance of an effective Integrated Managerial System implementation is increasingly recognised as essential by all types of organisations when facing today’s turbulent and competitive environment. However, the studies available are mainly focused on large companies and the known differences in managerial practices between large and small organisations impede the generalization of the available investigations to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) without further analysis. In order to contribute to this research gap, we investigate how a leading SME was able to successfully implement an Integrated Management System (IMS). The research validates the effectiveness of the structure of the management system proposed by Kaplan and Norton (2008) for large organisations, and, as emerging issues, it highlights the need for SMEs to overturn the traditional approach, linking operations to strategy. The analysis identifies some key factors to overcome the conventional barriers against the implementation of an effective management system in SMEs.