Port Authority of Cartagena: Evidence of a Sustainability Balanced Scorecard

Abstract

This paper provides a deeper understanding to the development and implementation of a Sustainability Balanced Scorecard in the Port Authority of Cartagena, under exploratory research. Open‐access documents available on different websites were used as data sources combined with semi‐structured personal interviews, which took place at the highest level of the organisation from September 2021 to December 2022. The strategy developed by this government unit has changed over the years, until 2018 when a new review, led by the Planning and Management manager, established a turning point in its sustainable strategy with the introduction of the Balanced Scorecard, resulting in a major internal change for the organisation. The creation of the Strategy Planning Office, external advice from strategy‐expertise consultants, IT solutions acquisition adapted to the new scenario, and several internal organisational changes, have been vital in this successful process. The Balanced Scorecard has been shown to be helpful in disseminating the sustainable strategy at all levels of the company: environmental and social actions were confined for years to the Sustainability Department, functioning as isolated actions, but now, they have reached the strategic level involving the whole organisation as part of the company's strategy. This successful process has put this organisation at the forefront of other Spanish ports, providing other port authority managers with a useful framework that can help them in their attempt to implement sustainable strategies by using the Balanced Scorecard—a framework not only valid for ports but which can also be extended to other government units.

Indicators of port sustainability: The example of Baltic Sea container ports

“…The first gap that can be identified is that there is no recent research on the SD of ports in the BSR. Moreover, few studies concerning European ports incorporate the TBL concept and address all three sustainability dimensions (e.g., Laxe et al, 2017;Lozano et al, 2019;Suárez-Gargallo & Zaragoza-Sáez, 2023). Even then, although some studies try to identify the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of port sustainability (e.g., Di Vaio et al, 2018;Hakam, 2015;Sachs et al, 2023) or assess some port sustainability indicators (e.g., Faut et al, 2023;Hossain et al, 2019Hossain et al, , 2021, these measures are not aggregated as one tool, and they usually do not deal with the problem of implementing port sustainability.…”

A Systematic Literature Review: the Role of Balanced Scorecard in Performance Measurement for Corporate Sustainability

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measure and improve their performance (Suárez-Gargallo & Zaragoza-Sáez, 2023). Knowledge is considered to be the ultimate power, and companies that understand the extent of their goal achievement have a significant advantage.

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