Rural Development Focused Social and Solidarity Economy Organisations’ Social Impact Measurement: A Systematic Review and Ways Forward

Social enterprises (SEs), which have emerged more recently among social and solidarity economy organisations are touted for steering rural development through their social impacts. However, SEs’ social impact measurement is underdeveloped theoretically and empirically despite its importance in the social and solidarity economy, specifically within social entrepreneurship field. This systematic literature review documents empirical studies of SEs’ social impacts in rural communities and reveals that the literature on social impact measurement is sparse, recent, and dominated by case studies and qualitative analysis. It lacks consistency in defining social impact and the social impacts are overwhelmingly reported as positive despite a lack of attribution of such impacts to SEs. We advocate methodological improvements such as: using a rural livelihoods framework, project/program level impact measurement, application of appropriate social impact analysis methods e.g., mixed method and theory-based evaluation approaches. These could strengthen design and management of SEs’ programs/projects besides advancing scholarship of SEs’ social impacts.