Social Impact Measurement. An evaluation and synthesis of existing tools and frameworks

Masters Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1.2, University of Manchester (Manchester Business School), course: International Business and Management, language: English, abstract: To this day, a great variety of tools, frameworks and best practices, aiming to measure the social impact of organisations, have been developed and used in practice. This variety reflects the fact that there is no perfect measurement tool and that there are still a lot of challenges to be faced by organisations that want to measure their social impact successfully. The challenges with impact measurement can be categorised into three different areas: Measurement limitations, limitations of an organisations resource base and limitations arising from the external environment. The problems presented here will be discussed in more detail in part 2.3 of the literature review. The present dissertation has two objectives. Firstly, it aims at reviewing existing impact measurement tools and frameworks. Secondly, it aims at proposing a new framework that synthesises and extends the existing social impact measurement practices. This study aims to aid third sector organisations to improve their performance measurement, which would contribute to a better resource allocation in the social economy and at the same time support organisational development and the transformation towards sustainable business models. In short, this research is intended to facilitate social change.