To Prove and Improve: An Empirical Study on Why Social Entrepreneurs Measure Their Social Impact

Abstract

This large-scale statistical study tests the validity of two factors that explain why social entrepreneurs measure their social impact as addressed by qualitative case based research. For this purpose, data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2015-survey is used to test the significance of the 'measuring to prove' and 'measuring to improve' dichotomy. Based on the results of a fixed-effects logistic regression analysis, this paper finds validation for both factors. Hence, the empirical setup allows for generalising the findings to a broader scope. Regarding 'measuring to prove', this paper finds that social entrepreneurs who receive funding from the government are more likely to measure their social impact compared to receiving funds from other sources. Regarding 'measuring to improve', this paper finds that social impact measurement is more likely among social entrepreneurs who innovate and prioritise their social mission. In addition, the 'measuring to improve' factor seems to be a stronger predictor for measuring social impact than the 'measuring to prove' factor. This paper may guide the actions of funders , policy makers and scholars who are engaged in the field of social entrepreneurship, generally, and social impact measurement, specifically.

The impact of social capital on scaling social impact: a systematic literature review

“…Owing to its importance, it is not a coincidence that research on scaling social impact has proliferated over the years. Some of these research explored implementation of different strategies to scale social impact (Dees et al, 2004a(Dees et al, , 2004bLyon and Fernandez, 2012;Vickers and Lyon, 2014;Heinecke and Mayer, 2012;Riddell and Moore, 2015), scaling social impact processes (Desa and Koch, 2014;Dobson et al, 2018), scaling social impact drivers (Sophie Bacq and Eddleston, 2018;Bloom and Chatterji, 2009), hurdles of scaling social impact (Andr e and Pache, 2016;Bradach, 2003), effective scalability framework (Weber et al, 2012), scaling from the viewpoint of a particular theoretical paradigm such as system innovation theory (Jolly et al, 2012) or world systems theory (Newey, 2018), scaling of one specific resources such as social capital Impact of social capital (Easter and Conway Dato-On, 2015) or social structures such as flow of financial resources (Moore et al, 2012), measuring social impact as performance outcome (Costa and Andreaus, 2020), developing and evaluating social impact measurement tools (Kah and Akenroye, 2020;Lee et al, 2013), which social enterprises measure their social impact (Maas and Grieco, 2017) and why they do it (van Rijn et al, 2021). However, academic research on how to define and measure scaling is still inadequate, and definitions vary with different academic disciplines (Desa and Koch, 2014;Islam, 2020).…”

Comparative Content Analysis on the Determinants of Social and Commercial Entrepreneurs: A qualitative approach on Nvivo

“…Social enterprises' phenomena were described as "innovative and social value-creating activity that can happen within or across the non-profit, business, or government sectors." The concept identifies two significant components (Van Rijn et al, 2021). Firstly, it reveals innovation.…”