Exploring italian social enterprises coherence in social impact assessment

The topic of Social Impact Assessment (SIA) is gaining even more importance, and this is especially true for Social Entrepreneurship (SE). The mission of solving social problems is probably the main feature of these organizations, thus the need to assess the extent to which this mission is fulfilled become essential. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current behavior of Italian social entrepreneurs in approaching the practice of SIA. This is also to see if, against the increasing conceptual interest toward this topic, there is an equally strong practical tendency to implement it, and if not, given the strategic value of this process, how it could be fostered. To meet this purpose a questionnaire was administered to Italian social enterprises. Furthermore, a Coherency Matrix was developed as a conceptual tool aimed at analyzing the relation between motivation and practice of SIA in social enterprises.