Robert S. Kaplan

Robert Samuel Kaplan (born 1940) is an American accounting academic, and Emeritus Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School, known as co-creator, together with David P. Norton, of the balanced scorecard.

Kaplan obtained his BS in Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also obtained his MS in Electrical Engineering. For his graduate studies he moved to the Cornell University, where he obtained his PhD in Operations Research. Since the 1990s he has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Stuttgart in 1994, the University of Lodz in 2006, and the University of Waterloo in 2008.

After his graduation Kaplan started his academic career at Tepper School of Business at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1968, and served as its dean from 1977 to 1983. In 1984 he moved to the Harvard Business School, where he was appointed Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development.

In 2006, Kaplan was named to the Accounting Hall of Fame. In the same year he also received the Lifetime Contribution Award from the Management Accounting Section of the American Accounting Association.

Kaplan and David P. Norton created the balanced scorecard, a means of linking a company's current actions to its long-term goals. Kaplan and Norton introduced the balanced scorecard method in their 1992 Harvard Business Review article, The Balanced Scorecard: Measures That Drive Performance.

This method has been endorsed by companies such as Mobil and Sears. The balanced scorecard envisages executives as pilots with a range of controls and indicators in front of them, based upon which they make decisions and develop strategies. He has also published in the fields of strategy, cost accounting and management accounting. Prior to Harvard, Kaplan was on the faculty and was Dean of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a co-founder, with David P. Norton, of ESM Software Group, formerly known as the Palladium Group, Inc. and before that, Balanced Scorecard Collaborative.

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