Despite the importance of social impact to social entrepreneurship research, standards for measuring an organization's social impact are underdeveloped on both theoretical and empirical grounds. We identify a sample of 71 relevant papers from leading (FT50) business journals that examine, conceptually or empirically, the measurement of social impact. We first describe the breadth of definitions, data sources, and operationalizations of social impact. Based on this analysis, we generate a typology of four approaches to conceptualizing social impact, which we use to organize insights and recommendations regarding improved measurement of the social impact of entrepreneurial ventures. approaches to address global social problems (Battilana & Dorado, 2010; Dacin, Dacin, & Tracey, 2011; Short, Moss, & Lumpkin, 2009). The market-based approaches that are characteristic of a social entrepreneurial approach inherently involve measuring societal impact and social performance (Grimes, 2010; Miller & Wesley II, 2010). Yet, despite extant research and practice demonstrating interest in creating and measuring social impact, standards for measuring this important construct are underdeveloped (Salazar, Husted, & Biehl, 2011). While research and practice have conceptually grounded social performance in social responsibility, new approaches to measurement have been proposed that have different basic assumptions and require fundamentally different measurement (Kroeger & Weber, 2014; Salazar et al., 2011). With such a heterogeneity in approaches, the literature lacks cumulative insights that could help social entrepreneurship research to progress more rapidly and more effectively. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to describe the relevant similarities and differences among approaches to studying social impact, and to use these insights to provide a more clearlyarticulated path for future research. To accomplish this task, we undertake a broad survey of papers published in the Financial Times list of 50 highly-ranked business journals (FT50) that focus on social impact. The 71 papers that we identify from our search differ along two dimensions: degree of generalizability and stage in impact process. Specifically, while some papers limit their definition and/or measurement of social impact to a single-sector, others can be applied across multiple sectors. Moreover, while some authors define and/or measure activities that may lead to beneficial social outcomes and impact, others focus on defining and measuring the outcomes themselves. Relying on these dimensions, we organize our sample into a typology, highlighting some of the exemplary contributions, and then discuss directions for future research that leverage the insights gleaned from this multidisciplinary sample of papers. THEORY AND BACKGROUND Social impact is an important piece of the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship (Dacin, Dacin, & Matear, 2010; Lumpkin, Moss, Gras, Kato, & Amezcua, 2011). While social impact might be considered to be the relevant performance-based...
