Managing Social and Economic Performance in Social Enterprise

Abstract

Social enterprise encounter has received enormous pressure to manage both social andeconomic objectives. This has given rise to tension in managing social and economicobjectives leading to tension within the organisation. Failure to manage this tension andcompeting demands between these two objectives raise concerns toward mission driftissue. The paper discusses the conceptualisation of social enterprise and its competingdemands, and the analysis of normative and empirical research on performancemeasurement system (PMS) and management control in social enterprise. From thenormative literature, a number PMS models for social enterprise were advanced.However, there is lack of empirical research on management control and performancemeasurement in social enterprise, especially regarding the ways an organisationdesigns 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 thecompeting demands since they are very much dependent on the manner organisationalview and deal with the needs of the two objectives.