Social Impact in Solidarity-based Organizations E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: ISTE Invoiced
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 336

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In recent years, social impact assessment (SIA) has become an important issue for organizations in the social and solidarity economy (SSE). SIA refers to the measurement of the effects of these organizations on society, and it is increasingly seen as a performance measurement for this type of organization.

Social Impact in Solidarity-based Organizations is based on a series of original case studies of SIA approaches carried out in a variety of organizations. It takes a nuanced, reflective look at SIA, charting a path between unreserved promotion and wholesale rejection of the very principle of the approach. The book focuses on the debates, uses and limits of SIA practices, placing them in their own contexts, values, challenges and objectives.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction: Social Impact Assessment: Values and Issues of a Practice in Social and Solidarity Economy Organizations

I.1. Social impact assessment for SSE organizations: issues and definition

I.2. Three main issues in social impact assessment

I.3. Presentation of the positioning of the book and its chapters

I.4. References

1 Co-Construction of an Assessment Process by and for Organizations in the Social and Solidarity Economy

1.1. Introduction

1.2. Contextualization

1.3. The VISES project

1.4. Action research project outcome: a social impact assessment process

1.5. Conclusion

1.6. References

2 Appropriate and Appropriated Social Impact Monitoring Tools for Social Enterprises

2.1. Introduction

2.2. Literature review

2.3. Methodology

2.4. Presentation and analysis of the tool

2.5. Discussion: lessons learned about appropriation of the tool

2.6. Conclusion

2.7. References

3 Assessment as a Socio-Political Compromise: Case Study of a Crèche Chain

3.1. Introduction

3.2. Assessment conventions in the social and solidarity economy

3.3. Social impact assessment at Berceau

2

3.4. Conclusion

3.5. References

4 Assessment Logics of Social Innovation Projects: Case Study of a Social Impact Bond

4.1. Introduction

4.2. The issues at stake in assessing social innovation from a perspective of funding and upscaling

4.3. Research methodology and empirical context

4.4. The construction of a social impact assessment process in the context of an SIB

4.5. Case study analysis: an imbalanced assessment

4.6. Conclusion

4.7. References

5 Social Impact Assessment in an Environment of Extreme Poverty: The Case of Access to Drinking Water

5.1. Introduction

5.2. The challenge of assessing the impact of a social enterprise in an environment of extreme poverty

5.3. The social enterprise 1001fontaines in rural Cambodia

5.4. Assessing the social impact of 1001fontaines in Cambodia

5.5. Discussion

5.6. Conclusion

5.7. References

6 Assessing SSE Organizations: A Relational Approach Constitutive of Value

6.1. Introduction

6.2. The limits of existing approaches to assessing social impact

6.3. The assessment of SdC’s social impact

6.4. Approaching assessment through relational value

6.5. Conclusion

6.6. References

List of Authors

Index

Other titles from iSTE in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 2

Table 2.1.

The reporting tool in its current form

Chapter 3

Table 3.1.

Simplified table from Studer (2022, p. 17)

Chapter 5

Table 5.1.

Annual demand serviced in m

3

Table 5.2.

Categorization of kiosks by tier (Tiers 1, 2 and 3)

Table 5.3.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) monitored by 1001fontaines

Table 5.4. Impact assessment of consumption of 1001fontaines water compared to...

Table 5.5. Impact assessment of the provision of drinking water on school abse...

Chapter 6

Table 6.1.

Examples of criteria and impact indicators of Simon de Cyrène

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Figure 1.1.

The actors in the VISES project and their interactions

Figure 1.2. Articulation between the VISES project and the VISES process to wh...

Figure 1.3.

Steps and objectives of the VISES process

Chapter 2

Figure 2.1.

The new social vision at SoliBel

Chapter 3

Figure 3.1. Translation and adaptation of the catalog of social impact assessm...

Chapter 4

Figure 4.1.

Operating diagram of a social impact bond.

Figure 4.2.

Presentation of the stakeholders of the SIB assessment process

Figure 4.3.

Implementation schedule of the various components of the SIB

Chapter 5

Figure 5.1. Theory of change applied to the trilemma of access to drinking wat...

Figure 5.2. The four hypotheses of evolution of average water production follo...

Figure 5.3. Example: a study of the increase in average production expressed i...

Guide

Cover Page

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction: Social Impact Assessment: Values and Issues of a Practice in Social and Solidarity Economy Organizations

Begin Reading

List of Authors

Index

Other titles from iSTE in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management

Wiley End User License Agreement

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Solidarity-based Management and Organizations Set

coordinated by Philippe Eynaud and Nathalie Raulet-Croset

Volume 2

Social Impact in Solidarity-based Organizations

Values and Assessment Practices

Edited by

Julien KleszczowskiNathalie Raulet-Croset

First published 2025 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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© ISTE Ltd 2025

The rights of Julien Kleszczowski and Nathalie Raulet-Croset to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2025933799

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78630-975-4

IntroductionSocial Impact Assessment: Values and Issues of a Practice in Social and Solidarity Economy Organizations

Why do we study the assessment of social impact in social and solidarity economy (SSE) organizations? These non-profit organizations constitute a growing field of initiatives across the world. It is estimated that they represent 7–10% of GDP depending on the European country. The term used to designate them varies according to the geographical context and category of organization: social enterprises, organizations/businesses in the social and solidarity economy, social entrepreneurship initiatives, social businesses, social cooperatives, associations, community enterprises, etc. Most of them become involved in the issues of assessing their activities, and the difficulty of giving visibility to a social impact that is often qualitative and a priori unmeasurable.

I.1. Social impact assessment for SSE organizations: issues and definition

Forming part of the third sector movement (Powell and Bromley 2020), SSE organizations have several specificities: their social purpose takes priority over other objectives, they develop a certain level of economic activity and they adopt a governance that is often more horizontal and participatory (Defourny and Nyssens 2006). For some of them, their economic activity is significant but their profitability is limited by specific rules that ensure adherence to their social purpose. For other organizations, resources are exclusively non-commercial – public subsidies, donations – and they have no or very little commercial activity (associations, foundations and other philanthropic organizations). In all cases, these organizations face the question of how to measure their success, whether for internal management purposes or at the request of external actors, in particular those providing financial resources. Unlike for-profit organizations that make use of financial tools to measure the achievement of their profit target, social and solidarity economy organizations must then measure their performance in terms of achievement of their social purpose. The term used by SSE actors to designate this particular measure of performance is “social impact assessment”.

I.1.1. An empirically important topic

Social impact assessment (SIA) has become an important topic for these organizations over the last 15 years or so. Indeed, we observe the emergence of new assessment practices, together with the availability of tools designed to identify, quantify and/or qualify these impacts. This is the case in France, where numerous business events assign a major, if not essential, place to this issue, and where a number of support and training schemes for this assessment are on offer. Thus, we can point to the existence of numerous methodological guides to assessment published in recent years (ESSEC Business School 2011; Avise et al. 2021; Avise 2022), the organization of dedicated events (e.g. the “Sommet de la mesure d’impact” organized by Impact Tank from 2023) or the establishment of a professional network (Social Value France) designed to provide support for the practice of SIA. These guides and tools are offered by federations and coalitions of SSE organizations and also by dedicated consulting firms (Studer 2021). At the international level, organizations such as the European Commission or the OECD have also published reports on this topic (GECES 2014; Social Impact Investment Taskforce 2014; OECD 2021). Recent studies attest to a developing practice within the social and solidarity economy (KPMG 2018; ESSEC Buisness School and Impact Tank 2021), in response to the actors’ growing need to be provided with readable outcomes to measure the performance of non-profit organizations (Brest 2020).

Social impact can be defined as “all the consequences of an organization’s activities on its internal stakeholders, direct or indirect external stakeholders in its territory, and on society in general” (CSESS 2012). This definition has a general consensus and corresponds with what is understood by the majority of actors when they use the expression “social impact assessment”1. Thus, SIA is outcome-based performance measurement of the SSE organization’s activity.

I.1.2. A question that still receives little academic attention

Since its emergence in the late 2000s, the SIA of SSE organizations has been an ongoing fundamental issue, still topical for SSE actors. Some even feel that SIA is the cornerstone of every action with a social purpose, as a way of explaining and substantiating the raison d’être of SSE organizations (Avise 2016). However, despite a growing number of publications on the subject (Alomoto et al. 2021), SIA remains relatively little studied at the academic level, particularly in the field of management and organization sciences.

Historically, publications have tended to focus on side issues, such as organizational efficiency (Herman and Renz 1997), performance or accountability of third sector organizations. The question of measuring performance by the outcomes of a SIA is more recent (Nicholls 2018; Speckbacher 2024). Publications at the international level are relatively sparse, and it is hard to identify a real community on the subject, apart from a few specific initiatives that managed to unite researchers. This is the case for the European research project VISES – Valorisation de l’impact social de l’entrepreneuriat social – carried out between 2017 and 2019 in France and Belgium (Mertens and Stokart 2017), which is presented in the first chapter of this book. A sub-theme was devoted to SIA at the EGOS conference in 2019 (Ebrahim et al. 2019), and we can also point to a special issue on this topic published in 2022 in the journal Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics (Bouchard and Rousselière 2022).

This book aims at making a contribution to academic knowledge on the SIA of SSE organizations. The standpoint taken, at the theoretical level, is that of the management and organization sciences. Other social sciences (economics, sociology) will also be leveraged, in an interdisciplinary perspective, to analyze the practices observed in the field. Our intention is to highlight theoretical contributions on SIA practices and tools, as they develop within and between organizations.

I.2. Three main issues in social impact assessment

Three main issues, raised by the SIA of SSE organizations, run through all the contributions in this book: the first has to do with the construction of assessment tools and practices, the second with the use and benefits of SIA for SSE organizations and their environment, and finally the third deals with the suitability of the practice of SIA to the specificities of SSE organizations and their value creation process.

I.2.1. The first issue: choosing the appropriate assessment tools and practices

Addressing the first issue, that of the construction of tools and practices, is difficult since the assessment of social impact is characterized by a contradiction: the need to report as objectively as possible on a reality that is largely subjective, being based on stakeholders’ perceptions (Nicholls 2018). It is thus necessary to identify qualitative and often subjective effects using numerical tools and through synthetic data, in order to conform with the logic of objectification. Faced with this challenge, actors often do not know how to choose an SIA tool.

To help SSE organizations assess their social impact, many tools and methodological frameworks have been developed in recent years (Scholten et al. 2006; Bouri 2011). Some classifications have been elaborated (Grieco et al. 2015; Alomoto et al. 2021), and several studies analyzed their application across projects and organizations (Branger et al. 2014; Maier et al. 2015). A feature of these tools and methods is that they take into account the specificities of the SSE’s actions (Kleszczowski 2020), even though a number of them are based on current practices in other organizational fields and sectors, including the for-profit sector and the field of public development policies. However, most specialists find it difficult to decide on a standard tool that all organizations should be required to apply to the assessment of their social impact (Stievenart and Pache 2014); on the contrary, it seems more appropriate for each SSE actor to construct its own practice (Kleszczowski 2020), in order to report in on the value created by its activities.

To account for the actual practices of SIA, it also seemed to us of interest to give a voice to the researchers who collaborated with the actors piloting the processes, because they are located closest to the empirical fields and understand their uniqueness. SIA processes are indeed radically different from more classical financial assessments, because they seek both to capture the perceptions of various stakeholders and in particular of beneficiaries, and also to ensure the reliability of the data on which the outcomes are based (Nicholls 2018). The processes and choices are characterized by a kind of bricolage in order to achieve these two latter contradictory objectives (Molecke and Pinkse 2017). It is then of interest to examine the criteria for choosing the tools (Kleszczowski 2020), the types of effects assessed and the methods of proof used (Benjamin et al. 2023). More broadly, the detailed processes of constructing the assessment, the processes through which the assessment is the result of discussions and compromises between the actors involved in this construction warrant in-depth research.

I.2.2. The second issue: studying the use and benefits of the SIA

Secondly, the question of the SIA’s inputs and uses is another important issue that is worth investigating. Indeed, in spite of institutional pressure on SIAs (Brest 2020; Kleszczowski and Raulet-Croset 2022), few SSE organizations are legally obliged to assess their social impact. This paves the way for a wide diversity of expectations and potential uses.

The SIA is often presented as a response to the expectations of external actors, particularly funders, for reasons of accountability (Ebrahim 2003; O’Dwyer and Unerman 2008). More broadly, numerous studies have demonstrated the SIA’s role in strengthening the legitimacy of organizations that make use of it (Lall 2019; Molecke and Pinkse 2020). However, this analysis does not mean that SSE organizations adopt SIA systematically and comprehensively. Indeed, some recent work has shown the diversity of organizations’ responses to institutional demand for SIA (Liston-Heyes and Liu 2021), ranging from partial and targeted adoption (Kleszczowski and Raulet-Croset 2022) to resisting a request from funders (Ormiston 2023).

Other studies stress that SIA can and should also be leveraged by organizational actors to monitor their business and make strategic decisions (Carman and Fredericks 2008; Lall 2017). The SIA then becomes part of a logic of learning (Lall 2019). Nevertheless, many practitioners highlight that little use is made of the outcomes and of what can be learned from the assessment in many cases, this final phase of the assessment process being frequently neglected due to lack of time and resources. It is therefore important to understand the actual (and not just projected) uses of SIA in organizations, and the conditions that allow the SIA to be fully exploited. Furthermore, it is also interesting to study how the SIA is combined with other assessment practices in organizations, whether mandatory or widespread as part of the existing management systems (quality control schemes, audits and internal control systems, strategic and operational dashboards, internal and external reporting practices, etc.).

Beyond the uses that fall within an instrumental logic, SIA is also a way of indirectly boosting the motivation and cohesion of the members of organizations, and can moreover feed into the identity issues of SSE organizations (Bouchard 2004). It is therefore of interest to also study uses that go beyond the issues of accountability and management.

I.2.3. The third issue: SIAs to apprehend the value creation of SSE organizations and their political role

The third issue that runs through SIA practices in the SSE sector relates to the promotion of these organizations as political actors. SIA, as a process, can also be a way of identifying the specific added value of SSE organizations, and giving greater visibility to their values and their weight as socio-political actors (Jany-Catrice 2022). In a perspective where management tools and devices are not simply neutral instruments but transmit an underlying ideology (Gilbert and Raulet-Croset 2021) and a management philosophy (Hatchuel and Weil 1992), it seems important to understand the broader and less immediately visible issues of SIA. Accordingly, some recent studies have shown that the SIA process is performative; in other words, it creates value in itself and does not merely reveal pre-existing value (André et al. 2018; Barinaga 2023). Decisions to highlight certain aspects at the expense of others, or the interactions generated by the assessment process, then become constitutive of the value of the SSE organizations.

We can therefore take the view that SIA is not only a necessary process for accessing a management and accountability instrument, but that it also constitutes an activity that is fully part of the collective dynamics of an organization, and its legitimacy in society. It is then of interest to explore in depth the conditions in which SIA practices can create value. More broadly, a detailed understanding of the characteristics of an SIA process which takes into account and highlights the specificities of the organization being assessed, in particular its own values and its socio-political dimension, is an important subject that has not received much attention until now in studies relating to SIA.

I.3. Presentation of the positioning of the book and its chapters

Our book therefore sets out to contribute to the three major issues presented above, which seem to us to underlie the SIA practices of SSE organizations.

The standpoint taken on SIA in this book aligns with a particular position that sets it apart from other contributions on the assessment of social impact of SSE organizations. Firstly, the various chapters give prominence to actual SIA practice within organizations, and do not limit themselves to the discourses and expectations of the field’s actors. Then, the technical dimension of assessment is widely discussed in the book, but it is combined with a reflective approach to the practices and their social anchoring. The contributions proposed by the various authors also adhere to a comprehensive stance, giving prominence to the construction process and to analyzing the motivations of the actors involved in SIA. Some chapters also adopt an action research approach for field investigations (Gilbert and Raulet-Croset 2023).

Thus, this book’s perspective on SIAs is neither proselytizing, i.e. an unreserved endorsement of the SIA, nor wholly critical to the point of wholesale rejection of the very principle of the SIA. On the contrary, it puts the emphasis on debates, uses and limitations, and assigns the assessments to their own context, their own challenges and their own objectives.

The book is composed of six chapters that address many questions relating to SIA and various contexts. Chapter 1, written by Charlotte Moreau, Helena Sadzot and Sybille Mertens, offers an in-depth analysis of the VISES project, an action research project on SIA conducted between 2016 and 2019. By describing in detail the process of co-constructing the assessment with actors from the organizations being assessed and by spotlighting five structuring choices within this process, the chapter demonstrates the value of action research for tackling the complexity of SIA.

In Chapter 2, Coralie Helleputte and Odile Dayez analyze the construction and uses of a dashboard for regular SIA in a Belgian social enterprise. Based on the literature on management tools, the authors demonstrate in particular how the content of the tool translates the organization’s fundamental vision. They highlight the actors’ focus on the procedural dimension and the effective use of the tool.

In Chapter 3, Marion Studer discusses how the representations of the various actors influence the process of constructing an SIA. Starting from an SIA in a federation of crèches, the author analyzes how the SIA process’s structuring choices are the result of a compromise between a managerial logic and a deliberative logic.

Chapters 4 and 5 study the assessment of the social impact of specific objects in particular contexts. In Chapter 4, Adrien Baudet, Mathias Guérineau and Julien Kleszczowski study the SIA of a social innovation project. Based on a program financed through a social impact bond, the authors show that the assessment mechanism as it was constructed belongs to a logic of funding and eclipses the logic of experimentation. They analyze the reasons for this imbalance, and highlight the unsuitability of the assessment to the experimental dimension of the program. Chapter 5, written by Guillaume Martin and Thierry Côme, then explores SIA in the context of developing countries. Based on an analysis of a number of SIA of a social enterprise in the water access sector in Cambodia, Guillaume Martin and Thierry Côme show their benefits as well as their limitations for understanding all the aspects of the social enterprise and also the problems inherent in assessing social impact in a context of extreme poverty.

In Chapter 6, Elena Lasida, Hélène Duclos, Julien Kleszczowski, Augustin Gille, Juliana Lima and Emmanuelle Briand propose an alternative approach to SIA. Their starting point is the observation that the existing approaches to SIA are centered on the effects of the activities, whereas the fundamental logic of SSE organizations is also based on a particular vision of the human being and a particular way of conducting its action. The methodological approach of the proposed assessment seeks to understand the identity of SSE organizations, called “social value”, and to assess the effects from a starting point of this social value. Based on the assessment of a community housing association for disabled people which adopts this specific approach, the authors highlight the specific methodological principles of this approach and show how it is based theoretically on a relational approach to value.

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Note

1

Despite a certain diversity of approaches and the distinctions made by specialists in the assessment of public policy and development aid where the term “impact” has a specific meaning, this definition can be regarded as having a consensus and corresponds with what is understood by most actors when they use the term social impact assessment.

1Co-Construction of an Assessment Process by and for Organizations in the Social and Solidarity Economy

1.1. Introduction

In recent years, the numerous articles in scientific literature focusing on social impact assessments (SIA) indicate a growing interest in this subject. Enterprises in the social and solidarity economy (SSE) are grappling with this issue, which is particularly central for them. The assessment processes developed by funders from the for-profit sector (venture philanthropy, socially responsible investment, etc.) present risks for SSE organizations (developed in section 1.2), since these processes are not always suited to their governance and their specificities. Nevertheless, some authors (Bouchard and Rousselière 2022) suggest that assessment has also become a tool for negotiation and empowerment, enabling SSE organizations to prove their worth, build stronger relationships with their stakeholders, engage in initiatives or take decisions.

Seeking to avoid having imposed upon them an assessment process that would not mesh with the realities experienced on the ground, SSE organizations, social and solidarity economy federations and academic actors worked together, in an action research approach, under the auspices of the Interreg project VISES (described in section 1.3), to co-construct an SIA process by and for SSE actors. This chapter’s contribution is therefore twofold. On the one hand, it sets out to demonstrate the value of an action research approach to apprehend this complex subject of the SIA of SSE organizations (developed in section 1.2) through a detailed description of the SIA process to which the action research approach has led. Thus, section 1.3 describes this.

1.2. Contextualization

The SIA has become a dominant issue for enterprises, and has various facets: demonstrating their contribution to sustainable development goals, strengthening their CSR practices, publishing a report on their socially responsible practices, giving visibility to the social impact they generate, etc.

This issue is especially central for SSE organizations which are pursuing above all a social purpose that is reflected in their day-to-day activities and practices. Generating this impact is their raison d’être. Moreover, the expectations in terms of demonstrating this impact are stated very clearly by the new breed of funders from impact investing or venture philanthropy and amplified by supranational institutions (G8, OECD, European Commission). Processes that have to do with impact are also developed by consultants and taught in a number of business schools. Public funding bodies are also starting to take an interest in this and even see it as a tool that could support the development of new types of public–private partnerships, as in the scenario of social impact bonds. The scientific community is also embracing this issue, as evidenced by the growing number of publications on the subject (Rawhouser et al. 2019).

However, proving the social impact generated by an enterprise is highly complex. Firstly, being able to assign, with certainty, an impact to the activities of the enterprise, and thus prove a causal link, requires demanding methodologies. This is what we call the attribution issue. Then, being able to take into account the impacts generated over the long term requires taking a step back. Assessing social impact necessitates stopping and taking our time, which is not always realistic in terms of the day-to-day activities of organizations. Finally, some impacts are difficult to measure, such as social cohesion or feelings of inclusion and usefulness.

To this complexity must be added the risks perceived by the SSE sector (federations and enterprises): the risk of isomorphism that would push SSE organizations to conform to the expectations of the environment, even if that makes no sense for them (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Bouchard and Rousselière 2022); the risk of bias in the selection of enterprises that are given visibility or funding (only SSE organizations that generate an easily demonstrable or “sexy” impact would be promoted); the risk of a mismatch between the needs of SSE organizations and the methods proposed (Kah and Akenroye 2020). In this context, allowing SSE organizations to take back ownership of this key issue which they are confronting with greater and greater urgency, seems essential. Moving forwards on these SIA issues therefore means, for the SSE, both gaining a better grasp of the injunctions and constructing a way of responding to them that is suited to the issues and imperatives of the actors involved. This is what the VISES project set out to implement. VISES is an action research project which took place from 2016 to 2019 and which sought to highlight the contributions that SSE organizations make to territorial dynamism and to the well-being of their inhabitants.

1.3. The VISES project

The VISES project (Valorisation de l’impact social de l’entrepreneuriat social1 – Valorization of the Social Impact of Social Entrepreneurship) is an action research project conducted over a period of four years (2016–2019) and supported by the European Interreg program. This action research brought together 23 French and Belgian (Walloon and Flemish) partners2, including federations, research centers, funders, public authorities and also 68 SSE structures that experienced the process. The research center to which the authors of this chapter belong, namely the Center for Social Economy3 of HEC Liège, was the academic operator of this project.

In the landscape of social impact assessment, the VISES project stands out from the many scientific works and measurement or assessment tools proposed by consultants, in that it positioned itself from the outset as an action research project. This scientific approach positioned “at the meeting between a desire for change and a research intention” (Lewin 1946) makes it possible, through change and through action, to take knowledge forward and, simultaneously, through the development of knowledge, to take action forward. Action research is “a democratic and participative orientation to knowledge creation. It brings together action and reflection, theory and practice, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern. Action research is a pragmatic co-creation” (Bradbury 2015).

1.3.1. Description of the VISES project

The objective of the VISES project was to enable SSE actors to take back ownership of the issues relating to SIA and to develop a process that makes sense and is appropriate to the specificities of SSE organizations. To do this, the process was tested with SSE organizations, thus allowing SIAs to be experienced by various SSE organizations. Various types of actors were involved in this large-scale project.

SSE federations provided support to enterprises to implement and experience the SIA process. They thus played an external support role (which will be described in section 1.4). Academic actors fed the partners with scientific knowledge and spearheaded proposals to structure an SIA process. The enterprises testing the approach, i.e. 68 SSE organizations, were thus supported by the SSE federations to assess their social impact on the basis of a co-construction process. Finally, two partner operator structures monitored the project end to end, in order to make the SIA a live issue among their members and advocate it to the public authorities.

Starting out from an analysis of existing initiatives (practical synthesis) and a state of the art on the SIA of SSE organizations (theoretical synthesis), the partners began by co-constructing an initial SIA process suited to the realities of SSE organizations, and then tested it, for two years, with the SSE organizations experiencing the process. During the four years of the project, the federations, the partner structures, the coordinating structures and also the academic actors, met regularly, at “research groups”, during which the federations shared their experiences of SIAs with the SSE organizations, while the assessment process was still under construction. The academic actors fed the debate with the existing academic knowledge and structured the discussions. The federations kept a log for each enterprise to which they were providing support, logging information such as the main characteristics of the assessment, the evaluative question, the problems encountered, how the enterprise had taken ownership of the process, a description of the data collection, the stakeholders involved, etc.