Over the past twenty years, the issue of performance measurement in Social Enterprises (SEs) has gained increasing relevance among researchers and practitioners. From an academic perspective, there has been an explosion in methodologies and tools for assessing social performance and impact, but with little systematic analysis and comparison across different approaches. From a practitioner perspective, SEs needs to start measuring their performances in a systemic way, in order to support decision-making and ensure accountability towards their stakeholders. In this context, this paper aims to contribute to the state of the art literature by developing an approach that could be applied to / by SEs to measure their results with respect to social, environmental and economic impacts. The proposed approach consists in a 'general' PMS model for SEs-i.e. the performance dimensions that should be measured-and a stepwise method to be used by SEs to develop their own PMS. For sake of clarification, the proposed approach is applied to the case of an Italian SE competing in the energy sector to develop a set of key performance indicators.

This paper aims to perform a review of different accounting frameworks, including indicators and metrics applicable to the social business sector, discussing the strengths and the weaknesses of different approaches in relationship to their ability to respond to objectives and interests of different stakeholders in the social business ecosystem. Then, the paper discusses the key role that indicators and metrics could play in the light of the transformations that the social business sector is witnessing, such as the emergence of new financial supply chains and the entrance of new relevant players