CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTING BALANCED SCORECARD IN THE SUDANESE ISLAMIC BANKS

Abstract

The origin of modern Islamic banks back dates to the 1960s in Egypt, where Mit Ghamr saving bank pioneered Sharia compliant financing replacing interest with Islamic formulas and mechanisms, then it subsequently spread to other Arab countries, including Sudan. Sudan’s banking sector has indeed adopted Islamic banking principles in all its transactions, This happened over several stages due to political and religious factors that preceded the secession of South Sudan in 2011. After secession of south Sudan, all banking activities in the Sudan are conducted in accordance with Sharia law (Islamic law). Consistent with prior research on modern management accounting methods in Islamic banks, this study evaluates the implementation of Balance Score Card (BSC) in Sudanese banks, through identifying the challenges of implementing (BSC) from the a perspective of banks’ employees. The researcher is likely to choose the descriptive research method because it helps to capture the current state of affairs, allowing the researcher to describe what exists and identify patterns or trends. In order to answer the research question, the selection of secondary data was biased on relevant, accessibility, and availability of systematically organized datasets suitable for the study, a questionnaire was designed and distributed to 10 branches for different banks working in Gadarif state located in Eastern Sudan, which were selected from about 35 branches for different banks working in the state, the selection was based on practical experience and the existence of relevant well-organized data for the study. Meanwhile, there are 10 employees were chosen randomly from any bank. Accordingly, 100 questionnaires were distributed to 100 employees, 93 valid questionnaires were retrieved for analysis. The study identifies 18 key challenges in implementation BSC in Islamic banks in Sudan. The highlighted challenges may include: Ineffective binding between the dimensions limits the cards’ effectiveness in directing organizational behavior toward achieving the strategy, Excessive number of indicators lead to difficulty in analysis, Weak information systems lead to poor formulation of metrics’ indicators, Employee resistance to change makes it difficult to implement the BSC, The difficulty of continuously evaluating the performance of non-financial indicators hinders the implementation of the BSC, The implementation of the BSC requires the exhaustion of additional financial resources, and Failure to link evaluation to rewards and motivation renders the BSC ineffective as a management tool. Finally the study suggested some recommendations such as: The banks can prioritize the challenges based on their impact and develop strategies to address them, this could involve allocating resources providing training and improving infrastructure to support BSC implementation. On the other hand, regulatory bodies can provide guidance and support to Sudanese Islamic banks to help them overcome the challenges and implement BSC effectively.