Where:Tory Building, Carelton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive , Ottawa K1S 5B6, Canada

When:27th July 2012 — from 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM

As more attention is given to social impact reporting, little is known about how and why organizations and businesses measure their social value and report their achievements.

Co‐authored by Dr. Fergus Lyon (Middlesex University) and Dr. Malin Arvidson (Southampton University) of the Third Sector Research Centre, this paper draws on theoretical and empirical material to understand these processes and examines empirical material from non governmental organizations in the UK.

Decisions over whether to measure, what to measure and how to measure are shown to be shaped by resource holders. Impact measurement and performance management are seen as a bureaucratic forms of regulations that allow outside stakeholders to control an organisation. However, the lack of consistent approaches and the range of assumptions that need to be made in any social impact measurement process provides social entrepreneurs in non governmental organizations with ‘room to manoeuvre’. This is shown to be a source of resistance to be controlled and of power to influence others.