What is a balanced scorecard primarily used for?

A balanced scorecard is primarily used for strategic alignment of business activities. This management tool allows organizations to translate their strategic objectives into a coherent set of performance measures. By doing so, it provides a framework that aligns an organization’s various operational and business activities with its strategy, ensuring that everyone in the organization understands how their roles contribute to the overarching goals.

The balanced scorecard typically evaluates performance from four perspectives: financial, customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth. This comprehensive approach enables organizations to monitor and manage their performance beyond just financial indicators, incorporating factors that drive long-term success and sustainability. This alignment helps ensure that all parts of the organization are working cohesively towards the same strategic objectives.

While the other options—financial audits, performance evaluation of employees, and market research analysis—consider important aspects of a business's functionality, they do not encapsulate the broader purpose of the balanced scorecard, which is focused on aligning operations and performance measures with long-term strategic goals.