Introduction

This volume of Advances in Management Accounting (AIMA) begins with a paper by Herath, Bremser, and Birnberg on a balanced scorecard strategic initiative model when there are resource constraints. Empirical evidence indicates that effective management of resources to implement strategy in a balanced scorecard (BSC) system is essential. In today’s difficult economic times, successful application of the BSC requires an insightful analysis of organizational resource constraints, which results in budgets linked to strategy. They present a mathematical model for allocating limited resources in the BSC strategy implementation process. Their joint decision model prioritizes strategic initiatives and concurrently calculates the optimal (or approximately optimal) set of balanced scorecard targets and weights, given multi-year resource restrictions. They address an important gap in the BSC literature on how organizations can effectively link strategy to resource budgets.