Maandblad Voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie 90(3): 79-86, doi: 10.5117/mab.90.31266
Social Return on Investment (SROI): a review of the technique
Mayra Ortega Maldonado,
Michael Corbey
Corresponding author:
Mayra Maldonado
(
mayra.ortega.maldonado@gmail.com
)
© 2018 Mayra Maldonado, Michael Corbey. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes, provided that the article is not altered or modified and the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Maldonado M, Corbey M (2016) Social Return on Investment (SROI): a review of the technique. Maandblad Voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie 90(3): 79-86. https://doi.org/10.5117/mab.90.31266 | |
Abstract
There is an increasing need and request from society to account for the social, economic, and environmental value that results from organizational activities. This trend has led organizations to initiatives like, e.g., Integrated Reporting (IR) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Nevertheless, at the level of investment projects, the focus of traditional investment appraisal techniques (like, e.g., Net Present Value) is still on future quantifiable operational cash flow after tax. Social or environmental effects of the investment are often not included in the calculation because these effects are typically hard to quantify. Social Return on Investment (SROI) is an investment appraisal technique that is explicitly designed to include these social and environmental effects into the project assessment. In this contribution, the SROI technique is introduced and reviewed. Results from literature, and interviews with four experts indicate that SROI has strong points. However, there is still room for improvement in areas like capacity (and experience) building, verification of the projects, and in fine-tuning of the technique itself.