The industrial ecosystem balanced scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is among the central concepts in strategic management. The four Industrial Ecosystem Principles (IEPs) are among the central theoretical constructs in industrial ecology. This theoretical contribution applies the BSC approach to IEPs to construct an Industrial Ecosystem Balanced Scorecard (IEBSC). BSC breaks the strategy of the organisation down to four interdependent perspectives. The Industrial Ecosystem (IE) is divided into four perspectives according to the four IEPs. The IEPs are roundput (materials cycles, energy cascades), diversity (in the involved actors/organisations), cooperation/symbiosis (cooperation in their relations) and locality in product life cycles. In BSC, two criteria are employed to evaluate the perspectives of the organisation's scorecard: the strategic vision and the financial perspective. In IEBSC, the strategic vision and overall objective is ecological sustainability. Sustainability principles (the strategic vision) and roundput (the central IEP perspective) are used to assess the diversity, cooperation/symbiosis and locality in IEBSC. The cause-and-effect chains and interdependencies between the four IEPs are identified. We innovate by linking the engineering and natural science-derived IEPs with the management and organisational models of the BSC that introduce strategic thinking to industrial ecology. The four IEPs can now be used complementarily. The IEBSC further illustrates how the cause-and-effect chains between the four IEPs may actually create unsustainable solutions and environmentally harmful outcomes.