A Cook's tour: Towards a framework for measuring the social impact of social purpose organisations

For over 50 years Operational Researchers have advocated that Operational Research (OR) could be considered as a useful set of ideas and methods for the benefit of society. However, this aspiration, while still chiming today, has yet to realise its full potential. This paper focuses on organisations whose remit is to alleviate social problems, and therefore have a social purpose. They are under considerable pressure to demonstrate the impact of the work they do. However, showing the value of these organisations is not easy. The paper contributes to this research gap by developing a framework for measuring the impact of social purpose organisations. This is accomplished by bringing together current research on Sen's capability approach and configurational theory, and arguing for an integrative view to show the value of social purpose organisations.