In the last decades, managementscholars have examined waysthrough which firms can build profitable operations while at the same time addressing pressing social and environmental concerns. But how can organizations ascertain whether their isolated or collaborative efforts are truly generating positive impact to their target populations? Measuring real impact requires addressing several issues related to causality, comparability, and cost (given that most methods require customized data collection and analysis). In this article, I briefly discuss alternative methods to assess impact and then suggest novel research avenues to inform the debate on how to measure impact and how impact measurement practices can help organizations blend social and economic goals.

Introduction

In the last decades, management scholars have examined ways through which firms can reconcile financial and social goals (Barnett, 2007; Battilana & Dorado, 2010; Margolis, Elfenbein, & Walsh, 2008). Corporate social responsibility practices (McWilliams & Siegel, 2001), bottom of the pyra- mid strategies (Prahalad, 2004), socially-responsible investing (Barnett & Salomon, 2006), and the pursuit ofshared value more generally (London & Hart, 2004; Porter & Kramer, 2011) have all emerged from a common desire to build profitable operations that also address pressing social and environmental issues. This effort is naturally aligned with the objective of policy makers and public managers to guarantee that state or privately sponsored activities effectively generate positive outcomes to the population at large (Bryson, Crosby, & Bloomberg, 2015; Moore, 1995). In fact, private and public interests are becoming increasingly interdependent as for-profit firms, nonprofits, and governments learn and discover opportunities for mutual collaboration (Mahoney, McGahan, & Pitelis, 2009). In this setting, a natural question emerges: How can these actors ascertain whether their isolated or collaborative efforts are truly generating positive impact to their target populations? Increasingly, there is growing concern on how to effectively measure the positive effect of their activities, if any, on relevant social and environmental outcomes (Donaldson, Christie, & Mark, 2015). Measuring impact, however, is far from a trivial task. First, there is the issue of causality: managers and policy makers would like to know if possible improvements in outcomes were caused by their own effort or instead other confounding factors (Duflo, Glennerster, & Kremer, 2008). Some view that assessing impact requires counterfactual analysis, that is, what would have happened to the target population if the project were not implemented in the first place (Brest & Born, 2013). Second, there is the issue of comparability (Kroeger & Weber, 2014). In traditional strategy research, economic performance is measured using standard indicators, such as return on assets or stock market value, compared to a common norm such as average industry performance (e.g. McGahan, 1999). But how to contrast the outcomes of projects covering distinct areas such as education health or crime prevention? Third, and no less important, there is the issue of cost. Assessing impact often requiresintensive data collection and sophisticated analysis—sometimes much like scientific research—, which creates formidable challenges for financially-constrained governments and entrepreneurs. The objective of this article is to briefly discuss how the measurement of social impact can and stimulate research on the strategies, challenges, and limitations to measure the impact of addressing socio-environmental needs. In the next section I discuss how the measurement ofsocial impact has evolved and then I turn to some comments on how this trend creates numerous opportunities for novel research in business administration.