BAE Systems is one of the world's top defense contractors that operates on a global basis with over one hundred thousand employees in a number of key markets when this case was written. However, currently, the company states that it has just over eighty thousand people who are working in over forty countries and the states that: "Working with customers and local partners, we develop, engineer, manufacture and support products and systems to deliver military capability, protect national security and people and keep critical information and infrastructure secure (BAE Systems, N.d.)."

When the company was developing it decided that it needed to implement a balanced scorecard to help turn strategic objectives into more tactical metrics that could help manage the company. Since the company is large, complex, and diverse, the balanced scorecard approach allows the company to design a program that can serve as a control system to help manage this complexity in a dynamic market. This paper will discuss some of the key points relative to BAE's implementation of the balanced scorecard approach.

Case Discussion

The case focuses on the Customer Solutions and Support business unit at BAE which is a critical division for BAE because it is responsible for customer support for clients among other functions. The division was tasked with a culture change...

Given that there are many intangible aspects to accomplishing these objectives, the balanced scorecard approach helped the company account for many factors that could not be accounted for under traditional metric systems. Furthermore, the company was also assisted by advances in technology, mainly an ERP system, which allowed the company to design metrics across divisions in a more holistic manner that allowed the company to develop a traffic light reporting system.
BAE's chief executive designed a seven step system to implementing the cultural and system changes based on the balanced scorecard perspective. The first step was to review the competitive position and devise a high level strategy. The next step was then to disseminate the high level objectives to a broader group to further refine them on a high level. A group known as the 130 Group was created for this task which involved key line managers (CIMA, 2005). In my opinion, this step was one of the most important steps to ensure that the BAE employees would be receptive to the cultural changes. By involving a broader group of employees from a diverse sample that represented the key line managers of all the relevant…