Details
Year: 2022
Published in: Hochschule Hannover – University of Applied Sciences and Arts
Cited as: Oppermann, Christopher (2022): Measuring the impact of social
enterprises: Do social enterprises fail to align their measurements with their mission and vision?, Management, No. 9, Hochschule Hannover, Fakultät IV – Wirtschaft und Informatik, Abteilung Betriebswirtschaft, Hannover, https://doi.org/10.25968/opus-2381
Subject
Measuring the impact of social enterprises: Do social enterprises fail to align their measurements with their mission and vision?
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to explore results that are measured by social enterprises (= SEs) according to their mission and vision. Four SEs are examined by conducting seven semi-structured interviews with persons from their middle and top management. A conceptual framework, which categorizes output, outcome and impact measurements, is used as the basis for a structured content analysis. The findings imply that SEs’ measurements are not sufficiently aligned with their mission and vision. Outputs are measured by all considered SEs. However, they fail to measure outcomes with all its sublevels. Especially, measuring mindset change and behavior change outcomes are neglected by the examined SEs. That can lead to adjustments, where SEs only create more outputs but fail to create more outcomes and impact. Furthermore, neglecting outcome measurements makes existing but mostly unsystematic impact measurements invalid, since outputs, outcomes and impact build on each other.
