Managing Social and Economic Performance in Social Enterprise

Abstract

Social enterprise encounter has received enormous pressure to manage both social and economic objectives. This has given rise to tension in managing social and economic objectives leading to tension within the organisation. Failure to manage this tension and competing demands between these two objectives raise concerns toward mission drift issue. The paper discusses the conceptualisation of social enterprise and its competing demands,  and  the  analysis  of  normative  and  empirical  research  on  performance measurement system (PMS) and management control in social enterprise. From the normative  literature,  a  number  PMS  models  for  social  enterprise  were  advanced. However, there is lack of empirical research on management control and performance measurement  in  social  enterprise,  especially  regarding  the  ways  an  organisation designs and uses its PMS to achieve a balance between social and economic objectives. Hence, a qualitative method is recommended as a developing strategy for managing the competing demands since they are very much dependent on the manner organisational view and deal with the needs of the two objectives.