This study investigates which objectives in the corporate balanced scorecard (CBSC) that corporate managers in large unlisted companies focus on within corporate control. It also investigates what the explanatory factors are for the corporate managers’ focus. The CBSC was proposed to alleviate the historical financial focus of managers in control activities. This study makes a contribution by reviewing corporate managers' focus on financial and non-financial CBSC-objectives in corporate control. A multiple case study was conducted, consisting of a mutually owned and a governmentally owned company, where data was collected from semi-structured interviews, internal documents and observations. Results indicate that corporate managers from the mutually owned company primarily focused on financial and customer objectives. Corporate managers in the governmentally owned firm primarily focused on financial objectives, complemented with quality objectives. Although having a mixed influence, the perceived complexity of measures, relationship between objectives and capital market pressure promoted corporate managers’ focus. The conclusion of this study is that financial objectives are prioritised in corporate control because of the influence of the three explanatory factors.