The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Review

By Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. Harvard Business School Press, 379 pages. $29.95.

Sequels are still more popular in movies than in the business book game, so The Strategy Focused Organization is notable as a follow-on to the authors' 1996 book, The Balanced Scorecard. In effect, this new book is an empirical study of how the theory has been applied, conducted by the team that coined the term.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the inventors/authors find that the companies they looked at are thriving under their system -- "putting strategy at the center of their change and management processes." With more than 200 companies having adopted BSC methodologies, there is a rich vein of examples to draw from, including such stalwarts as Mobil (now Exxon Mobil)...