Management & Marketing no. 2/2014

Social impact measurement in social entrepreneurial organizations

Shahrazad Hadad,
Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania

Oana (Drumea) Găucă,
Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania

Abstract. We live in a world where accountability (and thus the measurement of inputs and outputs) has become an institution due to the increasing demands of stakeholders, and where what gets measured gets valued. The purpose of the hereby paper is to address change and the impact of change upon society. Whether the change is caused by social innovation, social entrepreneurial organizations or social responsibility actions, it translates into a modification in the status quo of the society. Thus, the discourse of our paper revolves around social value, social problem, social entrepreneurship and it connects them to the social impact they generate by presenting the methods used to measure this impact and their basic assumptions, who applies the methods and what are their effects. The methods for measuring the social impact found in the literature lean on quantifying everything in money and they also tend to overlook the importance of the psychological impact a company might have over its target clients. Furthermore, social impact is measured from the perspective of the companies and of the investors, neglecting the customers who are the target of the impact. Also findings reveal that there is no proper legislation to regulate this field and no specialized control bodies to oversee the activity of the third sector regarding social impact. We propose three principles underpinning our own social impact measurement model (sustainability, added value and scalability (spillovers).

Keyword: Social impact, social change, social entrepreneurship, measurement, social value, social problem.

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