Impact Measurement as Agentic Activity toward Sustainable Development

Despite the promise entrepreneurship holds to foster sustainable development, surprisingly little is known about the actual outcomes and impacts of sustainable ventures. Through an explorative case study design conducted in Germany, we shed light on how different impact measurement (hereafter: IM) activities are characterized, and what kind of outcomes they have on organizational and societal levels. From our inductive coding a novel typology of IM activities emerged based on their level of agency and formaliy, including IM as fragmented frame, IM as aggregation and IM as bridge. Drawing on this typology, we propose a new theoretical framework of IM as agentic activity toward sustainable development. This framework highlights how distinct IM activities lead to different consequences in terms of legitimacy, impact monetization and exploitation of sustainability potential. Taking these outcomes together, we characterize three distinct sustainable venture types based on the role impact plays in their context and business model as the result of the different IM activities: impact as bonus, impact as added value, impact as a service. Our findings entail important theoretical contributions at the juncture of IM, sustainable entrepreneurship, and agency, as well as guidelines for practitioners.     «

Despite the promise entrepreneurship holds to foster sustainable development, surprisingly little is known about the actual outcomes and impacts of sustainable ventures. Through an explorative case study design conducted in Germany, we shed light on how different impact measurement (hereafter: IM) activities are characterized, and what kind of outcomes they have on organizational and societal levels. From our inductive coding a novel typology of IM activities emerged based on their level of agen...     »