The aim of this assessment is to stimulate a deeper understanding of a management accounting issue and encourage you to develop a critical approach to the techniques available to contemporary managers. In addition you will be encouraged to:
• Write suitable business reports.
• Locate, extract and analyse information from a variety of sources.
• Develop a questioning (critical) approach to your work.
Topic: The Balanced Scorecard.
Newcroft Hospital Trust is a large public sector hospital operating in a major city in the North East of England. The hospital is funded by the Government but is regarded by the Department of Health as self-governing. The hospital’s mission statement is "Our Patients are at the Heart of Everything we do". The hospital’s Trust Board aims to provide a high quality of care whilst ensuring value for money for the taxpayers who indirectly provide the funding for the hospital.
Requirements:
1. Kaplan and Norton (1996) created the Balanced Scorecard to provide managers with a better performance measurement system, one that was linked to the organisation’s strategy.

Prepare a business report for the benefit of a hospital’s Trust Board on the concept of a Balanced Scorecard that also analyses its usefulness for the hospital.

The report should be a maximum of 1200 words and written in a style suitable for a General Manager to read. This is not an essay and therefore we would expect it to have a clear structure with appropriate sub-headings.

2. Write a short review that critically compares and contrasts two articles on the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard.

800 words maximum

The word count includes everything in the main body of the business report and the critical review (including headings and citations). You should use appropriate UWE referencing protocols throughout the assessment.
You must use 12 point font size (headings may use 14 font size) and state the word count for each part of the assessment.

Marking guidelines for the Coursework:

Overall Coursework 100%

Use of proper referencing 10%

Presentation of work in accordance; structure, use of sensible headings, sentence construction and use of English, Logical flow within the report 10%

Part 1 – Business Report

Report format 5%

Students will be expected to provide a comprehensive identification and clear demonstration of familiarity with relevant information sources. 10%

A good student would provide a critical assessment of the usefulness of the Balanced Scorecard in a hospital environment based on secondary information sources. A good student would demonstrate a depth of analysis and synthesis of information sources. 30%

Part 2 – Critical comparison of two articles on the use of the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard
The review should contain some background on each article. In addition students may compare the research methods used by the articles and identify any limitations. In addition a good student would compare the findings of the two articles and use other sources to support their comparison. 35%