Hi Olga,

Thanks for the comment again.

I really fail to understand how you were misled that our balanced scorecard on pg. 3 demonstrated a strong focus on financial performance. Only two elements out of seven refer to the financial performance of the organization. As a percentage that will be 29% of all the measures which is definitely not a majority. It appears that you have a really unique state of mind.

I also fail to see how our balanced scorecard model failed to fit MSF Australia’s mission and strategy. Could you give us an example how you would have approached it?

It’s great that you feel that “the change in volunteer staff should be compared to the change in resource pool”, but that will definitely not be a smart measure to use as a benchmark. The point is to benchmark the HR division’s performance based on the total number of qualified doctors recruited. You obviously have not thought this through well enough. You would definitely be overstating the HR division’s performance if you are to include just the figures for the newly qualified doctors. The HR division is recruiting not just new qualified doctors but all qualified doctors with adequate skills.

It’s great to see the positive quotes on PU on the pages you have sighted. However, I thought that the aim of your report is to provide “most suitable” performance measures for MSF Australia. I hope that you had the chance to look over the Project Unit section in the annual report on pages 26 – 27. The statements “as planned the PU grew from being a one-person department to a two- and (temporarily) three-person department” and “In total the department carried out five support visits to field projects in 2006” somehow do not give me the image that the Project Unit is the main aspect of MSF Australia. I mean, great, I really feel that MSF Australia is going towards the right path and that it should slowly build its way up to the operational activities, but why would you need a KPI to measure performance in these areas when the scale is so small? Even if MSF Australia is to excel in the Project Unit, how would it be reflected in the overall performance of the organization? I believe that the effects of the Project Unit would be so minimal at this point that it will not affect the performance of the organization at all.

Finally, on your comment regarding references. We strongly apologize for not using the references. We thought that we were not writing an essay for school, as it appears you have envisioned. If you take a look at some professional reports, you would not see any referencing at all. The purpose of a report is to suggest ideas to a certain company. Do you seriously believe that the company would look for “plagiarism” in a professional report and threaten the preparers to send it in to the disciplinary committee? I am sorry to hit you with the truth, but unless you are writing a PHD essay, no one will really think of accusing you of plagiarism. I mean, can you imagine your boss accusing you of plagiarism when you are explaining a certain accounting term? Especially for something broad as the definitions for a balanced scorecard, lead indicators and lag indicators, I really fail to see how referencing is necessary. I am happy for the hard work you have put in to critique our essay, but I believe that you are missing the point of the report.

Once again, thanks for commenting on our report. Your comments are highly appreciated.