Challenging Management Control Systems in a post-pandemic era: the adoption of the Dynamic Balanced Scorecard for Sustainability to Manage Unintended Employee Behaviors

The recent environmental dynamism has exacerbated unintended employee behaviors, such as quiet quitting and great resignation, which require organizations to adapt their management control systems to remain competitive and resilient. Traditional MCS frameworks often prove to be inadequate in addressing these new phenomena. This can be related to their emphasis on internal controls and financial metrics, which neglect the impact of broader external and complex factors on organization performance. Although the Sustainability Balanced Scorecard framework has proved to be effective to deal with such level of complexity, the use of a static and linear perspective limits its contribution. To bridge this gap, authors suggest combining the SBSC with the Dynamic Performance Management perspective. The resulting Dynamic Balanced Scorecard for Sustainability framework aims to support organizations to detect, monitor, and manage unintended employee behaviors, such as quiet quitting, caused by uncertain environments. By incorporating dynamic cause-and-effect relationships and emphasizing non-financial performance indicators, this framework is intended to enhance organizational resilience and sustainability