1 The implementation of Balanced Scorecard in small firms: insights from a case study Paulo Afonso - psafonso@dps.uminho.pt Jorge Cunha - jscunha@dps.uminho.pt University of Minho – 4800-058 Guimarães - Portugal ABSTRACT Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is an approach promoted by academics and consultants and implemented in large companies since the early 1990s. It permits the balance between the objectives of short and long term, between financial and nonfinancial indicators, lagging indicators and performance drivers (leading indicators) and between internal and external perspective of performance (Kaplan and Norton, 1996).It permits also to translate firm’s operational and strategic complexity into manageable financial and nonfinancial indicators and to communicate goals, results and strategy amongst a large number of collaborators and hierarchical levels (Kaplan and Norton, 1996, Bible et al., 2006). Small firms have much less complexity and collaborators than large firms. The process followed, the reasons behind and the results achieved with the implementation of BSC in small firms are they different when compared with large firms? Little attention has been devoted to these issues in the literature. Based on the implementation of BSC in a small firm, this paper contributes to the understanding of this phenomenon. From the results obtained, two important conclusions were achieved. With a BSC, on one hand, small firms communicate better their strategy amongst collaborators and, on the other hand, they are more able to align operations management with their strategy. KEYWORDS: Balanced Scorecard, Strategy, Small firms, Case study