Somers, A. B. (2005). Shaping the balanced scorecard for use in UK social enterprises. Social Enterprise Journal, 1(1), 43-56.

Pages:  14

Selected Quotes:

"The initial assessment of performance measurement tools revealed that those currently being piloted for quality and impact measurement focus on external results rather than internal analysis of the organisation. However, as much of the value created by social enterprises occurs inside, many existing tools overlook this contribution. The study presented in this paper found that the original Balanced Scorecard could be adapted successfully for use with UK social enterprises. The SEBC places social goals at the top of the strategy map, aligns social and economic priorities, and organises activity around the most important driver(s) whilst also ensuring financial sustainability. In the SEBC, social goals are prioritised over financial goals; the financial perspective is amended to refer to financial sustainability, thus creating an indicator for revenue growth, cost reduction, and the costs of advocacy and stakeholder engagement; and the stakeholder perspective is widened. It was found that the SEBC has the potential to communicate performance to internal and external stakeholders and presents an opportunity to build credibility among investors, funders, customers, and stakeholders."

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Gibbon, J., & Affleck, A. (2008). Social enterprise resisting social accounting: reflecting on lived experiences. Social enterprise journal, 4(1), 41-56.

Pages: 16

Selected Quotes:
"The process of getting social enterprises to agree to take up SA took much longer than anticipated. It has been suggested that it is “a good sign” that trustees and managers have a “sceptical curiosity” towards performance improvement methods (Paton, 2003, p. 164). Social enterprises ought not to immediately reject all forms of social impact measurement including frameworks within measurement can be reported, but think about which method is appropriate to their organisation (www.proveandimprove.org). The VtD project offered only SA, and this research supports other work recognising that “embedding new knowledge requires time and space in the
organisation” (Somers, 2005, p. 54). The layered structure of certain social enterprises with a voluntary board, management, employees and volunteers could make it a more difficult to embed SA throughout the organisation. The results from the experiences of VtD participants and JSP would agree with earlier findings that acceptance by senior management and the board was an obstacle (Raynard and Murphy, 2000)"

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