22.16    Balanced scorecard, ethics. (40 minutes)

John Emburey, division manager of the Household Products Division, a maker of kitchen dishwashers, had just seen the balanced scorecard for his division for 2008. He immediately calls Patricia Conley, the management accountant for the division into his office for a meeting. ‘I think the employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction numbers are way too low. These numbers are based on a random sample of subjective assessments made by indi- vidual managers and customer representatives. My own experience indicates that we are doing well on both these dimensions. Until we do a formal survey of employees and cus- tomers sometime next year, I think we are doing a disservice to ourselves and this company by reporting such low scores for employee and customer satisfaction. These scores will be an embarrassment for us at the division managers’ meeting next month. We need to get these numbers up.’

Patricia knows that the employee and customer satisfaction scores are subjective, but the procedure she used is identical to the procedures she has used in the past. She knows from the comments she had asked for that the scores represent the unhappiness of employees with the latest work rules and the unhappiness of customers with missed delivery dates. She also knows that these problems will be corrected in time.

 

Required

1    Do you think that the Household Products Division should include subjective measures of employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction in its balanced scorecard? Explain.

2    What should Patricia do?