Author(s): Hema Priya M, Venkatesh R
Social entrepreneurship research is a relatively new research area that distinguishes itself from the umbrella of traditional entrepreneurship research through its mission orientation. As the country encounters various social and economic crises concerning the livelihood and well-being of the bottom of the pyramid population, there is a growing shift in business focus towards the 'for-benefit' social enterprise business model that targets solving them. Though social value creation, as opposed to profit generation, is the primary objective of these social enterprises, financial sustainability is crucial for their viability, survival, and scaling. While gaining access to capital and operational resources is considerably challenging, the process of value demonstration, delivery, and impact measurement are vital for resource providers to recognize and evaluate the perceived return on investment for these 'for-benefit' social enterprises. This obligation gives rise to the necessity of incorporating performance measurement and evaluation in these 'for-benefit' social enterprises. The nature of duality in these 'for-benefit' social enterprises demands a more practical and reliable 'strategic performance measurement' model to quantify and measure both their social outcomes and financial success for outsider evaluation. Though there is increasing scholarly attention in building a collective literature pool on various aspects of 'for-benefit' social enterprises' origin, characteristics, performance, and success, the facet of performance measurement is yet left unattended. On that account, this paper intends to explore the need for integration and implementation of performance measurement systems in 'for-benefit' social enterprises. This paper also discusses the concept of a 'double bottom line' approach and the privileges these 'for-benefit' social enterprises can achieve in the impact investment market by incorporating it in their performance measurement model.