The conventional BSC remains with its perspectives almost exclusively in the economic market sphere. However Kaplan and Norton have already pointed out that the BSC concept is not a rigid precept and that the structure of the BSC should be adapted to the organisational strategy. In the recent years numerous projects have adapted the traditional BSC approach in order to assist the decision-making and planning process in terms of sustainable development (e.g. Figge et al. 2001, Bieker 2003, Schalttegger 2011). The aim of these Sustainability Balanced Scorecard (SBSC) approaches is the integration of the sustainability dimensions – economy, environment and social – in the overall strategy.
Against this background different possible starting points are available for the formulation of a SBSC. Figge et al. (2001) propose three different integration options: Firstly, environmental and social aspects can be integrated and subsumed in the four existing perspectives of the BSC, secondly the BSC can be extended by an additional perspective taking into account environmental and social aspects (figure 2) and thirdly a specific environmental and/or social scorecard can be formulated. The three variations do not exclude each other but can occur simultaneously with the formulation of a specific SBSC.