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Sustainability is becoming the main character of the financial industry in Europe, especially after the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) 2019/2088, which came into force on March 10th, 2021. However, despite the top‐down indications for disclosing and reporting sustainability practices provided by this new policy, financial actors still lack a comprehensive framework on how to track and measure their social and environmental contributions within the perimeter of this novel institutional context. This paper discusses the implications for financial actors brought by the SDFR and builds a conceptual link with social impact measurement practices. In particular, the article provides a comprehensive framework that identifies strategic approaches and measurement tools for financial actors for building a more sustainable finance, that is a finance focused on the purest dimension of blended value and more attentive to sustainable development.

Social enterprises access large networks of stakeholders to gain strategic benefits. We identify determinants for creating blended value through partnerships of social enterprises and develop an understanding of blended value co-creation. Findings from 18 cases suggest that most social enterprises generate value by integrating partners in the businesses’ structures or by venturing into deeper personal connections through extensive knowledge-sharing that can culminate in partner-specific assets. Social enterprises take two distinct approaches in designing their relationships: an anthropocentric extroverted or a structurally integrated approach. By adding a social perspective on value creation, this study enriches the concept of the relational view.

We reviewed the literature on institutional forecasters of entrepreneurial action across international settings. Our objective was to explain variance in entrepreneurial venture performance based on gender, education, culture, and institutional resources of financing, technology transfer, and state policies. Our conceptual model subsumes various prior approaches to entrepreneurship. Our empirical examination is especially large and includes individual data (n = 198,384) from 69 different regional contexts captured by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. To examine institutional factors in the proper qualitative context, we utilized additional data from the National Experts Survey of Entrepreneurial Climate. We examined interactive effects with rigorous statistical analyses. Our research shows that, for female entrepreneurs, education moderates the effect of institutional factors on performance in general and of technology transfer activities in particular. Our study offers a powerful implication that education is vital to female entrepreneurs across cultures. Moreover, our study shows that technology transfer support is particularly important for females as it creates entrepreneurial opportunities that are uniquely actionable in gendered contexts.

In the last ten years, we have witnessed a proliferation of investors claiming blended value strategies, i.e., pursuing both economic and social returns in their investments. Aside from this rush for self-selecting in a blended value finance context, we still do not know to what extent the investors’ claims actually reflect investment decisions. Evidence suggests that, in some cases, such investors tend to maximize the social performance over the financial performance, in some others, the effect is reverted, but literature currently lacks studies aligning the analysis of the investment decisions with the investment portfolios. Yet, it is still unclear whether blended value investment decisions are enacted as a result of investors’ deliberate strategies and what influences this relationship. In this paper we tackle this issue, analyzing the extent to which investors’ finance firms pursuing goals aligned with their strategic aspirations. Specifically, adopting a Fractional Logistic Regression model, we test the effect of investors’ aspirations toward social impact on the extent to which their investees (i.e., the portfolio of firms in which they invest) pursue social returns. Results suggest the existence of a positive and significant investor–portfolio alignment effect (i.e., the higher the investors’ aspirations toward social impact, the higher the number of investees with higher social aspirations). Yet, this effect is influenced by contingencies at both investor and portfolio levels. Investors with strong aspirations toward social impact that: (i) invest in countries with high levels of social inequality, and (ii) are located in countries that support social progress and maximize, in their portfolios, the presence of businesses pursuing social impact. We discuss implications for future researchers, policymakers and practitioners.

This study compares the yield to maturities on green versus brown corporate bonds on their issue dates. Comparisons are made by taking into account market, firm, bond, and currency characteristics in addition to the green status of the bonds. Analyses show that if these characteristics are not taken into consideration, it is possible to find support for the existence of a ‘greenium’ at a magnitude of about 25 basis points. However, when all yield factors are included in the models, results completely change and indicate that issuers do not necessarily enjoy any cost advantage when they issue green instead of brown bonds. Failure to consider the interactions among all control factors may lead to biased findings regarding the existence of a greenium.

The commitment to generating a blended value is increasingly spreading in the business sector. At the forefront of this movement, impact ventures are organizations born to produce value for the society, i.e. social impact, while engaging in commercial activities to sustain their operations. On the other end, we have observed an increased emphasis on more responsible, sustainable practices that traditional for-profit businesses have been called to establish. Accounting for and reporting on social impact has become increasingly of interest to a range of institutions and sectors, with the result that many competing methodologies, approaches, guidelines and standards have been introduced. The chapter performs a comprehensive review of existing approaches for impact measurement and management implemented by socially-oriented ventures (both not for profit organizations and for-profit businesses) focusing on both methodological, governance and operational barriers and enabling factors of the practices. Then, it drafts a framework which helps any ventures to structure a process and methodology to measure its blended performance. The research not only contributes to the scant literature on impact entrepreneurship but impact ventures might offer a compelling laboratory to disentangle the obstacles posed by the combined achievement of financial and social objectives and how organizations might address these challenges.

We are facing a new trend in doing business moving beyond corporate social responsibility where new hybrid business models are formed to address a variety of societal and environmental challenges. The fourth sector can be defined as the group of organizations, models, and practices whose objective is to solve the great problems of the twenty-first century, combining elements from the three traditional sectors: the public, the private, and the nongovernmental. The fourth sector is rising in different forms in this new entrepreneurial landscape such as social enterprises, business-owned enterprises, cross-sector collaborations, and B corporations. Businesses within the fourth sector are blended value organizations because they pursue social and environmental goals at the same time that they use business methods. This chapter disentangles the meaning of the fourth sector shedding light on the new entrepreneurial ecosystems for new sustainable business models.

Impact investing (II) aims to achieve positive social and environmental impact and create blended value through sustainable value propositions. Building and expanding on a diverse and growing research corpus on socially responsible investing (SRI), social impact bonds (SIB) and social enterprises our study investigates the structuring elements of impact investing, its dynamics and trajectory. A particular emphasis is placed on the complex web of interactions among numerous stakeholders (i.e. banks, institutional investors, portfolio managers, public, for-profit and nonprofit organizations and social enterprises) with opposing objectives and antagonistic assets in sourcing and channeling financial resources. This paper highlights the importance of adopting a multistakeholder approach when examining the financial ecosystem within which II intermediaries operate and collaborate achieve maximum social and environmental impact.

Project management is a well-established discipline among private companies, but not widely utilised in non-profit organisations. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of project management in social enterprises that combine these two organisational forms – the business and the charity - and contribute to the understanding of how social enterprises use project management practices to run their activities. A survey was conducted among Czech social enterprises listed in the Directory of social enterprises website, operated by P3 – People, Planet, Profit, o.p.s, a non-profit organisation dedicated to popularising social entrepreneurship and innovation. A questionnaire was sent to 203 organisations claiming to be social enterprises. In total, 61 responses were received. Descriptive statistics and the chi-square test were used for the analysis. The research has provided for the first time an empirical analysis of project management practices in social enterprises. It suggests that social enterprises use project management tools for their activities; the statistical tests show, however, that there is no statistically significant relationship between annual turnover, number of employees and support from European Union funds and project management practices.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of the term impact investing and examine how Nordic impact investors manage risk, return, and social and/or environmental in emerging markets. Relevant aspects to impact investing have been identified to enable this thesis to be conducted. The thesis derives from a qualitative research method, this to gain a deeper understanding of the term and how Nordic impact investors conduct their business in emerging markets. The thesis is based on a deductive research approach due to that the term impact investing has a limited amount of previous research. The literature review highlights relevant theories related to the research questions. The concepts presented are impact investing, emerging markets, dual interest, and risk management. These theories have later been put into a conceptual framework to showcase the interconnections. From the conceptual framework, three main concepts (impact investing, dual interest, and risk management in emerging markets) have been established and then later analysed based on the empirical data gathered from a multi-case study. The analysis chapter includes a comparison and discussion between the empirical findings and the literature review in order to answer the thesis research questions. Furthermore, the analysis follows the same concepts presented in the operationalization. The final chapter reveals the conclusions drawn based on the analysis conducted. The final chapter further highlight implications both theoretical and practical, followed by suggestions for future research. The theoretical implications of the thesis pinpoint that impact investing require conceptual clarity to raise more awareness and gain recognition. Furthermore, risk management is an essential part of conducting investments in emerging markets. The practical implications showcase that impact investing can be conducted in several different ways and that there are no distinct patterns on how to manage impact investments best. Furthermore, the thesis stresses the importance of impact investing in emerging markets.

Purpose: Social enterprises (SEs) are businesses managed by entrepreneurs who seek to improve society. Blended value accounting is a conceptual framework for measuring combined social and financial outcomes in SE. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of the use of BVA methods on the success of the social enterprise. Age of business and no. of employees were used as control variables along BVA. Success is determined through a social and financial basis. Design/Methodology/Approach: Data was collected using a close-ended questionnaire from 150 respondents working in different social enterprises, and analyzed using factor analysis, structured equation modeling, and ANOVA for comparison. Findings: The result showed that No. of employees has a significant impact on success based on financial performance, but not on social success. The results also showed that there is no significant impact of the use of BVA method on Success based on both financial and social performance and it is concluded that the choice of the BVA method and sector of business does not have a significant impact to the financial and social success of the firm. The result from a Comparison of means showed that different BVA methods do not seems to be significantly different in terms of social success, whereas in the case of financial success, their impact varies significantly. Social impact tracker is the best BVA method to be used by social enterprise and B-impact is the least important to be used for social success and PCV Social impact is the best BVA method to be used by social enterprise and B-impact is the least important to be used for financial success. Results also showed that social performances of Social enterprises are significantly different in social sectors but not significantly different in the financial sector. SEs working in the Agriculture sector is creating the highest social impact and the education sector is the second-highest to achieve social success whereas Livelihoods sector is creating the least social impact. The education sector is creating the highest financial impact and the clean water sector is the second-highest to achieve financial success whereas Health sector is creating the least financial impact. Practical implications: The findings suggest that the managers of social enterprises should select a BVA method that is budget-friendly to implement and is in line with industry standards. Supportive agencies are advised to create an institution that reports the social change impact SEs create through their businesses and encourage all businesses to adopt the social-change orientation of SEs. Originality/Value: This is the first study that measured the effect of BVA methods on performance for Pakistani Social enterprise.

Efforts have been made to improve the performance of social enterprises through many studies on social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship. However, previous studies have conceptualized social entrepreneurship based on researches on commercial entrepreneurs. In addition, the scale used in the analysis of social entrepreneurship focuses primarily on behavioral aspects. Although the social and economic values pursued by social enterprises are important virtues for social entrepreneurs, research on the value orientation of social entrepreneurship is insufficient. The essence of a social enterprise is creating social value based on financial sustainability, so the concept of blended value has been recently emphasized. This study analyzed the relationships among blended value orientation, social entrepreneurship, and the performance of social enterprises. The results indicate that the blended value orientation of social entrepreneurs influenced social entrepreneurship and performance, social entrepreneurship fully mediated blended value orientation and performance. These findings suggest that it is important to focus on the blended value orientation of social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship in the promotion and policies of social enterprises.

Social ventures (SVs) based on social entrepreneurship are often labeled in the literature as hybrids because of their inherent different institutional logics between social and commercial thinking. As one potential consequence, it is further argued that these not-yet institutionalized organizational forms lack legitimacy. In this conceptual paper, we articulate our concerns with this trend in social entrepreneurship research. We propose configuration theory as an alternative approach to move forward and argue that from a configurational lens such SVs can be identified as distinct, yet coherent configurations driven by their intrinsic and idiosyncratic value bundles and related value creation goals. We demonstrate how this helps overcome the raised concerns and contribute to the literature on social entrepreneurship and configuration theory.

The main economic purpose of a business organization is to create value for its owner. The value concept is a complex notion that has developed alongside human history and reflects the concerns of human society through time. As a result of the value theory, the management of value has also emerged as an essential and accompanying activity. Value-based management emerged as a management philosophy rather than a management method. It consists of a change in mindset from managing resources or output quantities to value creation. The challenge is to identify or create the value flows and act upon these within the specific business organization to have proper value management. Value creation and value management will define the business organizations in the economy of the 21st century, which is governed by knowledge and information. The present paper focuses on the history and development of the value concept and the history and development of the management of value through value-based management.

We examine entrepreneurs’ economic, social, and environmental goals for value creation for their new ventures. Drawing on ethics of care and theories of societal post-materialism, we develop a set of hypotheses predicting patterns of value creation across gender and countries. Using a sample of 15,141 entrepreneurs in 48 countries from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, we find that gender and cultural values of post-materialism significantly impact the kinds of value creation emphasized by entrepreneurs. Specifically, women entrepreneurs are more likely than men to emphasize social value goals over economic value creation goals. Individuals who start ventures in strong post-materialist societies are more likely to have social and environmental value creation goals and less likely to have economic value creation goals. Furthermore, as levels of post-materialism rise among societies, the relationship between value creation goals and gender changes, intensifying both the negative effect of being female on economic value goals and the positive effect on social value goals. In other words, post-materialism further widens the gender gap in value creation goals.

This article explores how sustainable entrepreneurs embed digital technologies in their business models to leverage social and environmental value creation. To this end, we draw on the institutional logics perspective of sustainable business models. The article contributes to research on sustainable business models and entrepreneurship by showing that digital technologies enable novel configurations of sustainable business model components: a blended value proposition, integrative value creation, and multidimensional value capture. Moreover, we discuss the complementarities and tensions of a digital logic and logics of sustainability that clarify and advance the link between these concepts in an entrepreneurial context. This further adds to the theoretical development of sustainable business models as manifestations of multiple institutional logics. The article yields practical implications by describing possibilities and drawbacks of digital technologies for designing sustainable business models.

Despite a growing interest in hybrid goals and blended value creation in entrepreneurship, most empirical studies assume that new ventures are created with a pure profit motive. It is increasingly ...

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This article reminds readers that the terms ‘value’ and ‘performance’ are used so routinely that we risk losing sight of their meanings, which results in a risk that Value Measurement and Performance Management become confused. A basic definition of value is provided—benefits minus costs—and discussed, making the point that tangible (rational) and intangible (emotional and social) issues must be taken into account. The work of Jean Baudrillard is referenced to help explain some of the complexity around buying value perceptions and decisions. A four-step process is outlined to help readers develop value assessments in a business context: (a) Value Hypotheses; (b) Sources of Value Flowcharts; (c) Value Word Equations; and (d) Value Models. An established means used by medics to evaluate pain is referenced to demonstrate the measurement of intangible factors. The information is then put into context with performance: What is Performance Management? And what does it mean for the multiple trade-offs that every business has to make every day? The article concludes with a summary and suggested action steps.

There is a need to rethink and redefine the social value added of entrepreneurial activities to society. In this paper we develop five pillars on which the evolving social role of entrepreneurship can rest and have its impact: (1) connecting entrepreneurial activities to other societal efforts aimed at improving the quality of life, achieving progress, and enriching human existence, (2) identifying ways to reduce the dysfunctional effects of entrepreneurial activities on stakeholders, (3) redefining the scope of entrepreneurial activities as a scholarly arena, (4) recognizing entrepreneurship's social multiplier, and (5) pursuing blended value at the organizational level, centring on balancing the creation of financial, social and environmental wealth. In a final section we discuss implications for practices and for further research.

Purpose This paper aims to explore the emergence and nature of impact investment in Australia and how it is shaping the development of the social enterprise sector. Design/methodology/approach Impact investment is an emerging approach to financing social enterprises that aims to achieve blended value by delivering both impact and financial returns. In seeking to deliver blended value, impact investment combines potentially conflicted logics from investment, philanthropy and government spending. This paper utilizes institutional theory as a lens to understand the nature of these competing logics in impact investment. The paper adopts a sequential exploratory mixed methods approach to study the emergence of impact investment in Australia. The mixed methods include 18 qualitative interviews with impact investors in the Australian market and a subsequent online questionnaire on characteristics of impact investment products, activity and performance. Findings The findings provide empirical evidence of the rapid growth in impact investment in Australia. The analysis reveals the nature of institutional complexity in impact investment and highlights the risk that the impact logic may become overshadowed by the investment logic if the difference in rigor around financial performance measurement and impact performance measurement is maintained. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for the development of the Australian social enterprise sector. Originality/value This paper provides empirical evidence on the emergence of impact investment in Australia and contributes to a growing global body of evidence about the nature, size and characteristics of impact investment.

Social impact measurement has become an increasingly important topic in the non-profit sector. In order to achieve this goal, new management tools have been designed and implemented by Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs). This chapter proposes a dynamic analysis of two social impact measurement processes implemented in a large NPO. We show that processes alternate steps of closing phases and opening phases, the former reducing the evaluation spectrum and the latter broadening the spectrum of evaluation. We argue that closing phases are a response to external demands for simplification, while opening phases meet internal forces for maintaining complexity. We then conclude that social impact measurement is in search of a balance between these two contradictory demands which plays a critical role in the design of the measurement tool itself., L’évaluation de l'impact social est devenue un sujet de plus en plus important dans le secteur à but non lucratif au cours des dernières années. Afin d'atteindre cet objectif, de nouveaux outils de gestion ont été conçus et mis en œuvre par des organisations à but non lucratif (OBNL). Ce chapitre propose une analyse dynamique de deux processus de construction d’évaluation de l'impact social mis en œuvre dans une grande OBNL. Nous montrons que ces processus consistent en une succession de phases de fermeture et de phases d'ouverture, la première réduisant le spectre d'évaluation et la seconde élargissant le spectre de l'évaluation. Nous montrons que les phases de fermeture sont une réponse aux demandes externes de simplification tandis que les phases d'ouverture visent le maintien de la complexité et correspondent aux enjeux internes. Nous concluons ensuite que l’évaluation de l'impact social est à la recherche d'un équilibre entre ces deux exigences contradictoires et que cet équilibre joue un rôle essentiel dans la conception même de l'outil de mesure.

This study aims to describe the family socialization beliefs and practices of Korean immigrant parents through testing psychometric properties of several newly developed items and scales to assess the major components of the Korean traditional concept of family socialization, ga-jung-kyo-yuk. These new measures were examined for validity and reliability. The findings show that Korean immigrant parents largely preserve their traditional and core parenting values, while also showing meaningful, yet not very dramatic, signs of adopting new cultural traits. The results also suggest that the acculturative process may not be simply bilinear but may generate a new, unique and blended value and behavior set from the two (or more) cultures involved. Culturally appropriate practice requires not only further validation of existing knowledge with minority groups, but the development of a theoretical framework of family socialization that recognizes the cultural uniqueness of immigrant families.

Social enterprise has become a key phenomenon in providing public services in many developed countries. The debate on the evaluation of the socio-economic impact generated by this kind of organization has gone hand in hand with the growth of social entrepreneurship. This study provides an exploratory analysis of the emerging practice of measuring the socio-economic impact of social enterprises using the theoretic construct called “Blended Value Accounting” (BVA). Among the models and tools proposed by BVA, we examine in particular the Social Return on Investment (SROI)—an instrument of causal contribution analysis—conducting a literature review on its application to the evaluation of socio-economic impact of social enterprises and on its implications for BVA. Finally, we reach a conclusion as to the role that these tools of mixed accounting and assessment might play—particularly the one examined—with respect to the positivist, critical, and interpretative theories of accounting, thus identifying the areas for further research.

We adopt a blended value framework with implications for how business schools and educators can design, implement, and measure social entrepreneurship programs. The framework stresses both social a...