Social Impact Measurement & Balanced Scorecard

A Review of Design, Effectiveness and Limits

Resumo

Balanced scorecard (BSC) has seen intensified scrutiny from academia in terms of its ability and effectiveness in driving sustainability goals. Additionally, the wider topic of organizational social impact measurement has seen similar debates around what can be considered a proper outlet for performance and control tracking. It also remained unresolved the need for a sustainability and/or social impact measurement solution that is standardizable, consistent, effective in achieving its goals and integrated in the corporate strategy. This paper takes on a journey of systematic literature review aiming to address whether a social impact measurement scheme can be effectively incorporated into existing performance monitoring & control systems. Following this approach, it investigates the space created around Balanced Scorecard (BSC), sustainability -as a benchmark in assessing their ‘co-existence’- and social value. The aim is to answer 2 research questions: (1) What are the missing links when it comes to achieving an integrated and standardizable approach in corporate sustainability and social impact measurement? (2) Is it effective to use BSC based design to monitor and track the corporate sustainability and/or social impact of an organization? This study analyzed 69 papers published between 2010 and 2024 and indexed on ISI Web of Science - Current Contents. These papers underwent comprehensive analysis with the help of Endnote and NVivo. Subsequently a refined sample of 40 papers, directly related to the research questions, was isolated. The findings of this study show that although existing infrastructures for performance management (i.e BSC) could be redesigned so that they can incorporate additional social impact measures, there are significant limitations in terms of effectiveness. It suggests that given the complexities of a social impact measurement endeavor, essential foundational elements of effective measurement and integration need to be addressed first. This implies having a tailored approach in the setup of performance tools able to effectively support the social impact measures endeavor.