Social impact in the social economy is one of the most demanding areas for theory and practice. It was visible in papers presented during the 8th EMES conference referring to specified topics that can be labelled as social impact. These themes included: social value, value creation, social impact, survivability, resilience, sustainability, measuring, assessing value over time, and scaling social impact. We perceive these particular subjects as part of the challenge of revealing benefits for society but also for persons engaged in social ventures broadly defined. The new Group takes a critical stance on the topic of social impact measurement and particularly tools and models. This Affinity Group generates debates on such critical perspectives when speaking about measuring or assessing social impact as they are very closely linked to investment and associated with business-oriented research and practice. The assumptions underlying many developed theories and models should become part of the scientific debate without being limited to discussions about the tools.
This Affinity Group works as a platform for EMES members to facilitate, initiate, and cooperate in three main areas:
- Organising seminars and webinars for exchanging ideas, popularising research results, sharing experiences with peers, looking for inspirations, comments, networking, and best practices, and initiating new projects and proposing conference sessions.
- Exchanging information about conferences, seminars, research projects, and publication opportunities in the field of SISE but also creating such possibilities.
- Engaging in common research and didactic projects profits from different methodological and theoretical perspectives for regional, national, and international comparison, bringing synergy for the AG members.
If you are researching and teaching the topics listed above and you want to join the group, please let us know.
The Group is formally led by Marek Ćwiklicki and Audrone Urmanaviciene.
Active members:
Andrea Bassi
Danijel Baturina
Egle Butkeviciene
Censu (Vincent) Caruana
Marek Ćwiklicki
Maya Giorbelidze
Maarten Hogenstijn
Nerea Abad Itoiz
Monika Klimowicz
Lasma Līcīte-Ķurbe
Irina Sinziana Opincaru
Zuzana Polackova
Sandra Ramos
Michael Roy
Ivan Steenkamp
Giorgia Trasciani
Rasheda Weaver
Audrone Urmanaviciene
Agnieszka Żur
Sally Kah
Laura Michelini
Pushkar Aditya
Agnieszka Pacut
Norbert Laurisz
Julianna Kiss
Mounia Borg
Hilde Svrljuga Sætre
* Affinity Groups are aimed at EMES members, but we have negotiated to keep them open for researchers joining for the first time. If you are interested and wish to learn more about EMES membership, you can do so here.
