AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

All organizations have impacts that affect economy, society and the natural environment. Academics from different streams of research (i.e. business and society studies, accounting, strategic management) propose several definitions of “social impact” (Latané, 1981; Burdge & Vanclay, 1996; Emerson et al., 2000; Clark et al., 2004). All these definitions describe, more or less explicitly, the concept of “change”, being each one based on the Theory of Change (Weiss, 1972; Anderson, 2004) – i.e., the change that an organization can produce in people’s way of life, culture, personal and property rights, fears and aspirations, but also with respect to community, political systems, environment, health and wellbeing. The measurement of social impact leads the organization to consider the changes on stakeholders as a result of the set of cause-effect relations proposed by the theory of change. The objective of social impact measurement thus is to understand, in social, environmental and economic terms, changes that have occurred in stakeholders’ lives because of organizations activities, in order to communicate it (Nicholls et al, 2009). Despite a growing interest on social impact measurement, academic production in the topic is still scarce. The present Ph.D. thesis contributes to the ongoing discussion by focusing on the theory, concepts and tools to measure social impact. In particular, two context of analysis are at issue: ethical finance and entrepreneurship education. The work consists of three papers. The first research wants to provide a review of the literature on the issue of measuring the social impact in the context of ethical finance, the second paper is an action research on a methodology for measuring the social impact of ethical banks developed through the extreme case study of Banca Popolare Etica, and the third research concerns the context of entrepreneurial education and aims at studying the impact of an MBA program on the antecedents of entrepreneurship intention of students in Ghana. More in details, the first paper is entitled “Review of impact assessment methodologies for ethical finance”. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature on measuring the social impact in ethical banks. Specifically, we discuss the approach of ethical banks to social impact and social impact measurement considering several studies and frameworks of analysis, then proposing a list of indicators and outcomes to be used to highlight the social impact of ethical banks’ activities. We also point out some gaps in the literature that we left as questions open for future research. The research was carried on with two partners: the Fédération Européenne des Banques Ethiques et Alternatives (FEBEA) and the Institute of Social banks (ISB). The title of the second paper is: “Measurement of social impact in financial institutions: the case of Banca Popolare Etica”. This is an action research on a methodology for measuring the social impact of ethical banks, grounded on the case study of Banca Popolare Etica. We use a…