Distinguishing game changers from boastful charlatans: Which social enterprises are serious about measuring their impact?
Social entrepreneurship (SE) is a beautiful and growing vehicle in society
to tackle social problems in innovative ways. Unfortunately, existing
research has failed to address to what extent SEs are truly living up to
their promises. In result, surprisingly little is known about the actual
success of SEs in creating social impact. Even more elementary, it is hard
to know whether SEs are measuring and monitoring their social impact.
Using a worldwide sample of 3.194 SEs from the Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor (GEM) data this study provides unique insights, as it represents
the first global and harmonized assessment of the practice of impact
measurement of SEs. Findings show that about 33% of the SEs in the
sample do measure their impact. Furthermore, the results show a
significant positive relation between economic mission, size and
innovativeness of the SE and impact measurement. The relation between
social mission and impact measurement show a significant negative
result. These results can be seen as a starting point in investigating the
actual practice of SEs involvement in impact measurement and opens up
interesting avenues for future research.