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.
The Group is formally led by Marek Ćwiklicki and Audrone Urmanaviciene.
If you are researching and teaching the topics listed above and you want to join the group, please let us know.
