“Balance”: the development of a social enterprise business performance analysis tool

To investigate the higher‐level skills needs and learning provisions for small medium social enterprises (SMSEs) in Northwest England in order to support strategies for lifelong learning and organizational development.

The study involved the development of “Balance”, a tool based on an adapted form of Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard (1996) performance measurement and management tool, integrating the notion of incremental learning development, and utilizing Kolb and Fry’s (1975) organizational learning cycle. Discusses the findings of piloting the tool in 30 social enterprises to make a case for an alternative approach to business analysis, where a qualitative approach is put forward.

The results indicated that the Balance tool provided SMSEs with an easy to use diagnostic tool for collating managers’ subjective opinions in order to simplify the analysis process and provide a reference point for discussing management skills needs. Reveals that there is a spectrum of social enterprise with the “need” or “social” driven organization at one end and the more “enterprise” driven organization at the other. Concludes that the “social” led business tends to focus on an informal, organic organizational system, utilising a loose business framework purely as a means to meeting the social/environment need, while the “enterprise” led business focuses on a structured business organizational system, embracing business logic and businesslike methods and discourse to meet the social/environment/business need.

Builds on research which was published in the previous issue of this journal (“Business practices in social enterprises”, Social Enterprise Journal, Volume 2 Number 1 2006) and outlines the current understandings and shortcomings of SMSE management knowledge.