Fergus Lyon

Research Seminar: Social impact measurement as an entrepreneurial process

Professor Fergus Lyon
Middlesex University (U.K.) and
Third Sector Research Centre

As more attention is given to social impact reporting, little is known about how and why organizations and businesses measure their social value and report their achievements.

Co‐authored by Dr. Fergus Lyon (Middlesex University) and Dr. Malin Arvidson (Southampton University) of the Third Sector Research Centre, this paper draws on theoretical and empirical material to understand these processes and examines empirical material from non governmental organizations in the UK.

Decisions over whether to measure, what to measure and how to measure are shown to be shaped by resource holders. Impact measurement and performance management are seen as a bureaucratic forms of regulations that allow outside stakeholders to control an organisation. However, the lack of consistent approaches and the range of assumptions that need to be made in any social impact measurement process provides social entrepreneurs in non governmental organizations with ‘room to manoeuvre’. This is shown to be a source of resistance to be controlled and of power to influence others.

Speaker Biography

Professor Fergus Lyon leads the social enterprise strand of the UK Third Sector Research Centre and has been researching social enterprise issues for the past 15 years in the UK and internationally.

Recent work has been focussed on how social enterprises can scale up in different ways and how organisations are currently measuring their impact. He has been working closely with a number of social enterprises and charities. Recent collaborative projects have included developing approaches for measuring impact for the Making Local Food Work Programme and for Citizens Advice. The results of his work are also shared through seminars and talks to social enterprises and policy makers.

He has a background in international development, and agriculture in Ghana, Nigeria, Nepal, Pakistan and India. He is also a co‐founding director of a small early years social enterprise and has been involved in setting up a Forest School programme.