Performance Management Systems: Balanced Scorecard vs. 360-Degree Feedback Performance Management is an essential part of yielding the best possible results from a company's personnel. And as many preferred systems for performance management demonstrate, the results are only possible with effective instruments and metrics for planning objectives, evaluating performances, ways of garnering feedback and providing proper incentives for achievement. To this end, the discussion hereafter considers The Balance Scorecard and 360-Degree Feedback as two systems of performance management that have the capacity to improve performance by providing for all of these functions.

With respect to the Balanced Scorecard approach to performance management, the text by Torrington et al. (2008) is particularly instructive. This methodology is highly dependent upon the integration of broader performance evaluators with directly quantitative determinants, demonstrating the focus which many firms will place on numerical indicators of the internal environment. According to Torrington et al., a wide range...

From here, Torrington et al. report, "managers are then provided with a range of indicators on a range of measures which they can use to monitor the progress of their department. The resulting date can be used to inform decisions and communicate human capital measures to a range of audiences." (Torrington et al., p. 815)
Insofar as the system is designed to provide company decision-makers with actionable data, the Balanced Scorecard has much in common with the 'continuous design' approach described in relation to the 360-Degree Feedback approach. According to Turner (2002), this adaptive method for configuring the points by which an organization measures its efficiency and functionality is known as 'continuous design' and is distinguished by its appeal to a diverse spectrum of sources for its developmental data. Also known as the 360-Degree Feedback approach, this demands consultations with all levels of personnel and, in this regard, relies…