SROI in Social Enterprises: A Systematic Literature Review of Recent Trends and Future Agenda

Abstract

The emergence of social entrepreneurship, since its nascent stage, brought to light the imminent need to make the social value creating models workable by measuring the value created by them. This study reviews the existing literature from the past two decades to establish the role of accounting techniques in the measurement of social value. Nine databases were searched with the word combination “SROI” and “social enterprise” to determine the number of publications related to the field and the trend in its publishing. A classification of themes from selected studies was conducted to establish the direction of research in this context. Social return on investment (SROI) has been tested as a compatible measure and its implementation in various scenarios produced results; however, the inadequacy of its outcomes gives rise to the question whether any measurement tool can be appropriate for social value measurement because there is a need to justify the measurement of social value. The current trends call for further research in the field of customized measurement tools for the measurement of social value.