Evaluating the Impact of Social Entrepreneurship: A Multi-criteria Approach

Abstract

Despite the importance of social entrepreneurship acknowledged in the literature, this field is still at a conceptual stage because the implementation and support of initiatives that solve social issues and achieve common benefits is not the full picture of the social impact and the structural changes that enable the dynamization of national economies. Therefore, the promotion of this type of entrepreneurship requires a framework based on leadership training and instruments that support the management to accurately measure their progress and results. This work is derived from an analysis of social entrepreneurship and the prioritization of variables to evaluate its social impact. Expert Choice, a piece of software based on an Analytic Hierarchy Process (APH), was used for the multi-criteria multi-goal analysis. The result was weighing the criteria expressed as qualitative responses, which makes the evaluation more flexible to respond to the needs and features of the types of social entrepreneurship.