The paper explores the adoption of the corporate balanced scorecard (CBSC) and its impact
on corporate control of business units. Following interviews with senior corporate managers
in 15 of Sweden’s largest multinational companies, 8 were found to adopt CBSC.
However, CBSC had little impact on control at the corporate level. Corporate control was
financially focused in all the companies: mainly financial measures were important, standards
were only set for financial measures and rewards were largely based on financial
performance measures. Top management’s need for simplicity and comparability internally,
and capital market pressures motivated the financial focus.